The Fourth of July, or Independence Day, is a day of celebration in the US.
Robert Frost, the New England master, broods here about the nature of American-ness. A historical footnote: the first edition of The Glasgow Advertiser, as The Herald was originally known, carried in 1783 news of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American War of Independence and recognised the new transatlantic nation.
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 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 realising westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
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