When reading this poem (seeing it was written by Robert Frost), I was surprised by how much I did not like it. Frost speaks here in abstract, almost legal-sounding terms ("Possessing what we still were unpossessed by / Possessed by what we now no more possessed...") that confuse me more than excite some emotion. All Frost seems to point out is that legally, they do not belong to the country in which they live although their living there makes it theirs. The part from "Something..." to "deeds of war" at first made no sense to me, and only after several readings did I guess that he meant giving themselves to the land somehow made them belong to it, and I still don't quite get it. The last three lines stand out the most to me visually, but I can't like them either because they don't seem true: "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" doesn't describe the cultures that existed in the west before the colonials "vaguely realized" in that direction. I suppose Frost speaking from the perspective of a newly-independent American would not see it this way and would write accordingly, but that line still bugs me. "Such as she was, such as she would become." Does this mean that the country would become, as it was, artless and unenhanced?
Does anyone have any more helpful insights on this poem?
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