The Gift Outright

Frost notes the meter when he calls his poem a history of the United States in “blank verse.” Blank verse doesn't feature rhyming lines, but it has metered lines, and the meter is iambic pentameter. Each line has ten syllables, and the ten syllables make five pairs of unstressed/stressed lines.

In Line 1, don’t stress “The,” but stress “land”; don’t stress “was,” but stress “ours”; don’t stress “be,” but stress “fore”; don’t stress “we,” but stress “were”; and don’t stress “the,” but stress “land’s.” Here, the meter emphasizes the importance of “land.” It appears twice in the line, and the reader stresses it each time. The land is the gift—it’s the reason for the “we” in the poem, and the iambic pentameter calls out its centrality.

Arguably, the lack of rhyme reflects the struggles and conflicts of the United States. Though the repetition creates some rhythm, the poem isn’t melodious. Like the nation, the poem sounds rather harsh or atonal. The absence of harmony also undercuts the “we,” hinting that the “we” isn’t unified and doesn’t share the same political or economic interests.