After Apple Picking: Read by Robert Frost
This is from a really old vinyl I have of Robert Frost reading his own poetry. I love listening to him, and I remember the first time I ever heard of Robert Frost was when he recited a poem at President Kennedy’s inaugural. The poem he had written for the occasion he couldn’t read in the sun so he recited a different one from memory. That’s when I first started reading Frost’s poetry.
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March 11, 2012 at 10:45 am
Mediafire Link:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jni0z08axo1a4x7
March 12, 2012 at 9:31 am
I had never heard Robert Frost reading his own poetry. Thank you for sharing this special treat!
March 12, 2012 at 11:16 am
Nan,
That old record is one of my treasures!
March 19, 2012 at 5:33 pm
I’d like to find out if you find the poem he actually wrote for the occasion and could not read that day. I recall his hesitation and decision to quote another poem.
March 19, 2012 at 5:36 pm
For John F Kennedy’s inauguration as President of the United States Robert Frost wrote a new poem entitled, “Dedication”. Like many others he conceived the new president as young Lochinvar, the perfect combination of spirit and flesh, passion and toughness, poetry and reality:
“… The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young amibition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.”
But the poet was old (87) and he couldn’t see the words because of the sun’s glare that bright, cold January day. The poem’s newness to him and his unfamiliarity with and uncertainty about the way it went caused him to stumble uncertainly with his voice and tone and he gave up. Instead he fell back on an old one he knew perfectly, and in the most splendidly commanding of voices, recited it impeccably:
~ The Gift Outright ~
The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
~ Robert Frost; 1874-1963 ~
April 26, 2012 at 10:42 pm
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April 26, 2012 at 10:42 pm
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