Manuscript of Robert Frost's "The Gift Outright," 1942

Courtesy of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia

 VQR published Robert Frost’s work eleven times, starting in 1927 with “Acquainted with the Night.” That poem was Frost’s response to a request for work from VQR’s founding editor, James Southall Wilson. Frost had a close working relationship with VQR, which he called “a favorite place of publication,” and he visited Charlottesville repeatedly, including to give a reading at UVA in 1929, and as a guest of VQR in 1961. In the Spring of 1942, VQR published Frost’s “The Gift Outright.” Just shy of twenty years later, Frost read the poem at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. During this reading, Frost changed the last line from “Such as she was, such as she might become” to “Such as she was, such as she would become.” The change makes the poem more assured of America’s future glory.