“After Apple-Picking” is a poem by American poet Robert Frost. It was published in 1914 in North of Boston, Frost’s second poetry collection. The poem, 42 lines in length, does not strictly follow a particular form, nor does it follow a standard rhyme scheme.
After Apple-Picking Poem by 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.
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.a
Poems / Robert Frost
- The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost, 1916 - Fire and Ice
Robert Frost, 1920 - Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost, 1923 - Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost, 1928 - Birches
Robert Frost, 1915 - Mending Wall
Robert Frost, 1914 - The Gift Outright
Robert Frost - Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost, 1923 - Choose Something Like a Star
Robert Frost, 1947 - A Question
Robert Frost - The Oven Bird
Robert Frost - After Apple-Picking
Robert Frost, 1914 - Home Burial
Robert Frost, 1914 - Out, Out—
Robert Frost, 1916 - The runaway
Robert Frost, 1923