After Apple Picking

After Apple Picking

Robert Frost 

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. 5 

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass 10 

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell, 15 

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear. 20 

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound 25 

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, 30 

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all 

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap 35 

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his 40 

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

I related this poem, obviously, to the reading Wild Apples by Thoreau.  This poem by talks about the hard work that goes into apple picking and what happens as soon as the apples have been picked.  The lines that particularly reminded of Wild Apples were: “Of the great harvest I myself desired.  There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. (lines 29-31).  The word ‘Cherish’ reminded me of something that Thoreau would say about apples, because of his belief that apples should be handled with care and eaten in their natural habitat.  Also, the end of the poem talks about going to sleep, which is a metaphor for fall (apple season) ending and winter starting.  This also reminded me about how Thoreau talked about apples through all four seasons and how every season is important for the harvest of the apples.  I believe that Thoreau would also be eager to sleep through the winter to get to the harvest of the apple as Frost writes in the ending of this poem.