There are so many variables it is hard to pinpoint exactly what motivated Frost to recall this harvest of apples. Is it day time or is it night? It could be night since Frost says, “I’m drowsing off”. The poem tries to give you the impression of early morning hours but that is deceiving. Since Frost speaks in the past tense when talking about the “pane of glass”, he “skimmed this morning from the drinking trough”. Frost speaks of a long, hard day picking apples. As he lies down to sleep, he can still smell the apples he has picked all day “The scent of apples: I am drowsing off”. Even after a nights sleep he still feels tired and hazy. He calls the ice that frozen over the water “a pane of glass.” Frost wonders if he is still dreaming or not. He has been looking forward to the harvest yet at the same time it is such a large task it made him tired of picking apples “of apple-picking: I am overtired”.
One could take this poem literally or look for a deeper meaning within the words. Perhaps, what Frost is telling us that if we have a desire we long for with our hearts that the reality of it may not be exactly what we thought it should be. Just as the apple harvest was desired at first, but when the reality of how much work it really took to accomplish he quickly becomes tired of the job. Frost points out that although there were “ten thousand thousand fruit to touch” each fruit was precious until it struck the ground. After that, it was good for nothing more than to go to the cider heap.
Frost is the one doing all the talking in this poem. The purpose is to remind the readers of the fact that even the most mundane events of our lives have a place in our memory. Apple picking may not be a major event to draw a memory from however; it is still an occurrence worth recalling. This poem appears to takes place in the early morning hours of the day. However, it is more likely night and the illusion of morning is just another memory recalled by Frost. And, the time of year is winter since the drinking trough has a pane of ice over it when Frost goes to get a drink of water. As important as the act of picking the apples is, so is the act of sleep. Sleep is mentioned throughout the lines of the poem. It is compared to “winter sleep”, and immediately following that, the speaker talks of “drowsing off.” Next, sleep and dreaming are closely linked in lines 15 and 17. Lastly, “This sleep of mine” and “long sleep” could be referring to death as “human sleep”. Perhaps he was drawing to the fact that a human’s final sleep is death, since this is the final line of the poem.
This is a rhyming poem that follows no set rhyme scheme. "After Apple-Picking" is in an iambic form, and mostly in pentameter, but the line-length varies from the very long as line one to the very short as line 32. They keep the readers alert and awake, while the speaker, which I assume is Frost, drifts off into a peaceful state of sleep. The speaker wonders if he is dead or dreaming: “Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, / Or just some human sleep.”
Robinson and Frost had many things in common. They lived during the same period and both of their fathers died when they were young leaving their families in a desolate state financially. Both Robinson and Frost won Pulitzer prizes for their poetry. They both were excellent in creating a character in verse. Mr. Flood seems so real you could almost hear him drunk and stumbling. Just as Frost’s character of the Hired man in “Death of A Hired Man” is so real I almost expect to walk out on my porch and see an old man lying dead in the chair.
As Robinson’s short biography points out “Robinson and Frost were modern in their point of view without being merely depressing” (American Poetry pg. 27). This biography also links these two artists by saying that “Frost is perhaps the poet closest to Robinson in sensibility. They share a novelistic interest in the dark and often contradictory motivations of the human heart and a penetrating gift of psychological analysis” (American Poetry pg. 28). They both had an uncanny ability to take the ordinary and make it seem precious.
I find this poem very easy to read and complicated all at the same time. Is he just recalling the apple harvest or is there something deeper on his mind? Is this sleep mentioned a restful act after a hard days work or is it a more permanent thing as in death? I thoroughly enjoy any poem that leaves me with more questions than answers. I like to be able to fill in the blanks left in my imagination instead of being led through a poem and told exactly what is going on.
Since, it is apparent this poem takes place when it is cold enough for ice to form over the water trough, and apple picking is done in late summer when it is not cold enough for ice to form, does this mean the poem takes place while they are picking apples or is it just a memory Frost is going over in his mind later in the year? Since Frost had two children to die at a young age was the poem “Home Burial” written in remembrance of having to dig his own children’s graves? Since Robinson and Frost lived somewhat around the same time, did they ever meet?
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