Poem: Robert Frost's "After Apple-Picking"

After Apple-Picking

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.
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
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,
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.
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
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,
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
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
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.



Arch Words Analysis:

This poem tells of the days after the apple harvest, when the narrator reflects upon what he has done and what he has left undone. His ladder is still leaning against the tree, and he has failed to pick all the apples. Winter is coming, and he knows that the harvest must be over, even if it is unfinished.

As in most of Frost's poetry, the simple diction and straightforward situation make a literal reading of this poem easy--but as in most Frost, there are many levels of meaning. The rhythms of blank verse (aka unrhymed iambic pentameter) undergird this poem. Some lines ("But I am done with apple-picking now") fall perfectly into this soothing rhythm, but others ("For all") stop short. This form underlines the tension in the poem between the narrator's "drowsing off" toward death and his tendency to focus still on his life's work; the short lines are like urgent thoughts that abruptly wake him from his doze. He claims to be done with apple-picking, but the poem shows that he cannot take his mind from it.

This poem equates the apple harvest with the narrator's life work--work he has found exhausting. The narrator's choice of words--such as using harvesting as a metaphor for sorting the worthy from the unworthy--has Christian undertones. The narrator says, "There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, / Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall." Those words hearken back both to the Christian concept of the fall (when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and were banished from the garden of Eden to work the land) and the fall of the sparrow mentioned in Matthew and Luke. The narrator suggests that there is something of value in preserving the good apples, even though the work has been overwhelming. The ladder in the poem's opening points "Toward heaven" like Jacob's ladder in Genesis 28:12 ("And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven"), which suggests that the narrator both believes in Heaven and believes hard work on earth (apple-picking) might be a route there.

The narrator, though, refers to "the great harvest I myself desired," which suggests that it is human and not heavenly work--self-will as opposed to divine will, just like Adam and Eve's harvest. In the second stanza, the narrator states that his unfinished work "will trouble / This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is." He does not know if death will be merely hibernation, as it is for the woodchuck (which implies the possibility of waking again in an afterlife) "[o]r just some human sleep." The poem, which begins with the heavenly and ends with the human, suggests the latter, but the narrator cannot say for certain.