Here’s a detailed analysis of Robert Frost’s poem ‘After Apple-Picking’; it’s tailored towards students taking the CIE / Cambridge A-Level syllabus but will be useful for anyone who’s working on understanding the poem at any level.
Great for revision, missed lessons, boosting analyti...
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.
VOCABULARY
Bough - a thick branch of a tree
Essence - the pure and indivisible part of something that
Pane - a flat sheet of something, usually glass (as in a window pane)
Hoary - grey-white colour
Russet - a dark orange colour
Cider apple-heap - a pile of bruised apples unsuitable for eating, that will be
crushed and fermented to make cider (an alcoholic apple drink)
Woodchuck - a large ground rodent, similar to a squirrel, that lives in the Northern
US states
STORY / SUMMARY
The speaker says that his ladder is still leaning against an apple tree, pointing towards
the sky. There’s a half-empty barrel of apples and some apples still left in the trees
that he hasn’t picked. But he can’t pick any more apples, sleep is arriving as it’s night
time and about to become Winter. He says that the drowsiness started this morning,
when he found a sheet of ice on a top of a water trough and looked through it at the
grass in the field. It melted and he allowed it to fall from his hand and shatter on the
floor, but even before it broke he was well on his way to sleep.
He could tell while he was half-awake, what type of dream he was going to have. He
sees apples - too large and out of proportion - appearing and disappearing, turning
around in front of him. His foot aches as it presses into the ladder, moulding to the
shape of the rung. He hears the ‘rumbling’ sound of lots of apples hitting the cellar bin.
It’s overwhelming; he’s had enough of apple picking. Even though he was enthusiastic
about collecting apples in the beginning, he’s now tired of the work he had forced upon
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