Complete Text
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.
Commentary
First, a comment on form. Throughout the poem, both rhyme and line-length are
manipulated and varied with subtlety. The mystery of the rhymes--when will they
come and how abruptly--keeps words and sounds active and hovering over several
lines. We find the greatest separation between rhyming end-words at the poem's
conclusion. Sleep comes seven lines after its partner, heap, and
in the interim, sleep has popped up three times in the middle of lines.
Sleep is, in fact, all over the poem; the word appears six times. But the way
it is delivered here, the last rhyme is masterful. Heap first rhymes
internally with sleep, then again internally with sleep, and then
again, and only pairs up with the end-word sleep in the poem's last line.
At this point, we've nearly forgotten heap. Sleep seems to rhyme
with itself, with its repetition, like a sleepy mantra or a sleep-inducing
counting of sheep. The poem arrives at final sleep not through a
wham-bang rhyming couplet but more "sleepily."
"There are many other things I have found myself saying about poetry, but the
chiefest of these is that it is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another,
saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority." This is
Robert Frost in 1946, in an essay for The Atlantic Monthly. "After
Apple-Picking" is about picking apples, but with its ladders pointing "[t]oward
heaven still," with its great weariness, and with its rumination on the harvest,
the coming of winter, and inhuman sleep, the reader feels certain that the poem
harbors some "ulteriority."
"Final sleep" is certainly one interpretation of the "long sleep" that the poet
contrasts with human sleep. The sleep of the woodchuck is the sleep of winter,
and winter, in the metaphoric language of seasons, has strong associations with
death. Hints of winter are abundant: The scent of apples is "the essence of
winter sleep"; the water in the trough froze into a "pane of glass"; the grass
is "hoary" (i.e., frosty, or Frosty). Yet is the impending death destructive
or creative? The harvest of apples can be read as a harvest of any human
effort--study, laying bricks, writing poetry, etc.--and this poem looks at the end of
the harvest.
The sequence and tenses of the poem are a bit confusing and lead one to wonder
what is dreamed, what is real, and where the sleep begins. It's understandable
that the speaker should be tired at the end of a day's apple picking. But the
poem says that the speaker was well on his way to sleep before he dropped the
sheet of ice, and this presumably occurred in the morning. The speaker has
tried and failed to "rub the strangeness" from his sight. Is this a strangeness
induced by exhaustion or indicative of the fact that he is dreaming already?
Has he, in fact, been dreaming since he looked through the "pane of glass" and
entered a through-the-looking-glass world of "magnified apples" and the
"rumbling sound / Of load on load of apples coming in"? Or is the sheet of ice
simply a dizzying lens whose effect endures? If, in fact, the speaker was well
on his way to sleep in the morning, does this lend a greater, more ominous
weight to the long sleep "coming on" at the poem's end?
The overall tone of the poem might not support such a reading, however; nothing
else about it is particularly ominous--and Frost can do ominous when he wants
to. How we ultimately interpret the tone of the poem has much to do with how we
interpret the harvest. Has it been a failure? Certainly there is a sense of
incompleteness--"a barrel that I didn't fill." The speaker's inner resources
give out before the outer resources are entirely collected. On the other hand,
the poet speaks only of "two or three apples" remaining, and these only "may" be
left over. Do we detect satisfaction, then? The speaker has done all that was
within his power; what's left is the result of minor, inevitable human
imperfection. Is this, then, a poem about the rare skill of knowing when to
quit honorably? This interpretation seems reasonable.
Yet if the speaker maintains his honor, why will his sleep be troubled? There
were "ten thousand thousand"--that is to say, countless--fruit to touch, and
none could be fumbled or it was lost. Did the speaker fumble many? Did he leave
more than he claims he did? Or are the troubled dreams a nightmare
magnification and not a reflection of the real harvest?
Lines 28-29 are important: "I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself
desired." If there has been failure or too great a strain on the speaker, it
is because the speaker has desired too great a harvest. He saw an impossible
quantity of fruit as a possibility. Or he saw a merely incredible quantity of
fruit as possibility and nearly achieved it (at the cost of physical and mental
exhaustion).
When we read "After Apple-Picking" metaphorically, we may want to look at it as
a poem about the effort of writing poetry. The cider-apple heap then makes a
nice metaphor for saved and recycled bits of poetry, and the long sleep sounds
like creative (permanent?) hibernation. This is one possible metaphoric
substitution among many; it seems plausible enough (though nowise definitive or
exclusive). However, our search for "ulteriority" may benefit from respecting,
not replacing, the figure of the apples. Apple picking, in Western
civilization, has its own built-in metaphorical and allegorical universe, and we
should especially remember this when we read a poet whose work frequently
revisits Eden and the Fall (c.f. "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "Never Again Would
Birds' Song Be the Same," "It is Almost the Year Two Thousand," "The Oven
Bird"). When the poet speaks of "the great harvest I myself desired," consider
also what apples represent in Genesis: knowledge and some great, punishable
claim to godliness--creation and understanding, perhaps. This sends us
scurrying back to lines 1 and 2, where the apple-picking ladder sticks through
the tree "Toward heaven still." What has this harvest been, then, with its
infinite fruits too many for one person to touch? What happens when such apples
strike the earth--are they really of no worth? And looked at in this new light,
what does it mean to be "done with apple-picking now"?
All of these questions are enough to make one forswear metaphor and limit
oneself to a strict diet of literalness. But that isn't nearly as much fun.
