The Full Text of “After Apple-Picking”
1My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
2Toward heaven still,
3And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
4Beside it, and there may be two or three
5Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
6But I am done with apple-picking now.
7Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
8The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
9I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
10I got from looking through a pane of glass
11I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
12And held against the world of hoary grass.
13It melted, and I let it fall and break.
14But I was well
15Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
16And I could tell
17What form my dreaming was about to take.
18Magnified apples appear and disappear,
19Stem end and blossom end,
20And every fleck of russet showing clear.
21My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
22It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
23I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
24And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
25The rumbling sound
26Of load on load of apples coming in.
27For I have had too much
28Of apple-picking: I am overtired
29Of the great harvest I myself desired.
30There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
31Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
32For all
33That struck the earth,
34No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
35Went surely to the cider-apple heap
36As of no worth.
37One can see what will trouble
38This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
39Were he not gone,
40The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
41Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
42Or just some human sleep.
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“After Apple-Picking” Introduction
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"After Apple-Picking" is a poem by Robert Frost. Rural New England is a common setting for many of Frost's early poems, and this one is no exception. The poem is set after the speaker has finished a seemingly ordinary day of apple picking, and is now halfway to sleep and dreaming. While many of Frost's poems use strict iambic pentameter and a formal rhyme scheme, "After Apple-Picking" defies such regular rhythm and rhyme as it mimics the often disorienting process of falling asleep. The poem was included in North of Boston, Frost's second poetry collection. Published in 1914, North of Boston was widely praised and advanced Frost's reputation as a major voice in American poetry.
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“After Apple-Picking” Summary
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I left my tall two-legged ladder in a tree pointing toward the sky, and I also left an empty barrel next to it. There are probably a few apples left on some branch that I didn't pick, but I'm not apple picking anymore. The night is beginning to feel like winter and I can smell like apples. I'm falling asleep.
I can't stop picturing the strange image I saw while looking through a piece of ice that I picked up out of a water trough this morning, and looked through toward the frosty grass. It started to melt and I dropped it, but I was already starting to fall asleep before it hit the ground, and I knew what kind of dreams I was about to have: close-ups of apples fading in and out, some showing their tops and others showing the opposite ends. I can see every speck of brown and red coloring clearly.
The arch of my foot still aches, and in fact still feels the pressure of a ladder rung. I can still feel the ladder moving slightly as the apple tree's branches bend. I keep hearing the rumbling sound of loads upon loads of apples being rolled into the bin in the cellar. I'm sick of apple picking. I'm so tired, even though I'm the one who wanted this great harvest.
There were thousands upon thousands of apples I could have gently picked and made sure wouldn't fall to the ground. Any apples that touched the ground, even those that weren't bruised or dirtied by the fall, were considered worthless and only suitable for cider. You can see already why I'm going to have a restless sleep, if I even do sleep. If the woodchuck, were he not already hibernating for the winter, could tell me whether the sleep I feel coming is like his hibernation, or if it's just regular old human sleep.
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“After Apple-Picking” Themes
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Worry, Work, and Sleep
Frost’s poem focuses on someone who’s exhausted after a long day’s work in an apple orchard. Drifting between wakefulness and sleep, the poem’s speaker replays the day’s events while feeling anxious about all the apples left unpicked. The poem reflects the often disorienting nature of falling asleep, and sleep itself is presented as neither restorative nor even restful. Instead, the poem suggests the ways that exhaustion serves only to reveal—and, indeed, to magnify—the speaker's worries.
The poem opens on an anxious note, as the speaker realizes that he or she has left behind a ladder "sticking through a tree" as well as plenty of ripe apples. Though it's the end of the day and the speaker is "done with apple-picking," the speaker can’t seem to let go of work, and fantastically, can still even smell the fruit in the night air.
It’s not entirely clear where the speaker is yet—whether still in the orchard or home in bed—and the tense of the poem keeps switching between the present and the past. This confusing setting is part of the point: the poem mirrors the discombobulation of drifting off to sleep, where reality and memory seem to intertwine. Indeed, as it becomes clearer that the speaker is in fact falling asleep, it's also clear that the speaker has little control over the images tumbling through his or her anxious mind. Instead the images come forth of their own accord, and in doing so compound the speaker's anxiety about having unfinished business in the orchard.
For example, the speaker dreamily recalls looking through a pane of ice lifted from the drinking trough earlier in the day. That the speaker can’t "rub" away the "strangeness" of this image again emphasizes the speaker's helplessness in this exhausted state, while the specific intrusion of ice is a reminder of the impending "winter sleep." Once again, this underscores the speaker's lingering worry surrounding work in the orchard (i.e., the unpicked apples, now left to fall as the seasons change).
As the speaker drifts closer to sleep, anxiety about work troubles his or her thoughts even more acutely. When considering what he or she will dream about, images of "magnified apples" fill the speaker’s mind, with "every fleck of russet showing clear." In this dreamlike state, anxiety begins to overtake the speaker's other senses too. The speaker hears "the rumbling sound / Of load on load of apples coming in," imagery that suggests being buried in work. Even the speaker's foot feels "the pressure" of standing on a ladder.
In the end, the speaker, seemingly resigned to this feeling of unease, remarks that it's clear what kind of thoughts will be disturbing his or her sleep. What the speaker seems to desire most is the deep, dreamless rest of hibernation—or perhaps even death, as the words "long sleep" might imply. Yet the final line suggests that all the speaker can hope for is the more fitful "human sleep"—hardly the restorative slumber necessary to tackle the next workday with energy and gusto.
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Creativity and Dissatisfaction
The anxiety surrounding work in the poem can be interpreted as an allegory for writing poetry—a draining, often repetitive endeavor that poets may find fulfilling yet also deeply exhausting and dissatisfying. In a broader sense, the poem can thus also represent any creative work and the pressure of trying to fulfill creative potential.
Think of the apples that crowd the poem as representing creative inspiration or output. During a creative period, an artist may have many ideas whirling in the mind, just as there are many apples in the orchard during the harvest season. And just as with farmers who need good weather and long days to gather a crop at just the right time, the writer must often work long days to take advantage of a creative phase.
Yet even as the speaker wants to pick all these apples—to explore all these creative avenues, to write all these poems—this work is tiring and repetitive, and at a certain point becomes overwhelming. Eventually, the speaker needs to take a break, to be "done with apple-picking." This suggests that periods of intense creative output must be punctuated by rest, just as soil and trees must be allowed to rest and regain strength between growing seasons.
At the same time, however, the implicit connection between writing and the natural world further suggests that periods of inspiration ebb and flow, just as the abundance of the harvest gives way to the stagnation of winter. The artist can't control periods of creativity any more than the speaker can control the changing seasons, and this is what fuels the speaker's anxiety: right now the speaker's creativity is in overdrive, but he or she’s not sure how long this period of abundance will last or how to best to take advantage of it before it's too late.
Indeed, the lines “There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, / Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall” indicate the speaker’s fear, as well as the frustration of being unable to work creatively with all the words and images that have come to the speaker. Making matters worse, the speaker worries that if he or she can’t take care of these ideas, they will become worthless and rot; creativity is fickle and fleeting, it seems, which creates a tension between the need to rest and the fear of wasting artistic potential. The artist realizes that the abundance of great ideas will probably end—it always does—and then there will be days or months or years that are unproductive. The poem doesn't arrive at any sort of "solution" to this anxiety and tension, but instead attempts to relay the darker side of creative expression.
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The Cycle of Life and Death
Though a human life often spans decades, an orchard's entire life cycle can be observed in just a year. In the poem, the speaker views the orchard itself as a lens through which to meditate on his or her own passing lifetime and mortality. But while the speaker's contemplation is tinged with fear and confusion, it also seems somewhat hopeful and curious about the changes to come. Through the example of the speaker, the poem suggests that though thinking about death may be uncomfortable, doing so can ultimately make aging and mortality less scary.
Throughout the poem, the speaker notes evocative, sometimes eerie images of the orchard's passage from autumn to winter. With fewer apples on the trees, the orchard begins to look desolate, and with the "essence of winter sleep" coming, it becomes a "world of hoary grass." "Hoary" can refer to the icy frost on the grass, but it also has more general connotations of age and sometimes irrelevance—a "hoary" person would be someone old enough to have hair the whitish color of frost. Similarly, the "blossom end" of each fruit is reminiscent of spring's flowers, while the autumn harvest occurs at the "stem end" where the apples are picked. The fact that the speaker's mind begins to sleepily confuse the images of these two seasons suggests that the orchard reminds the speaker of the way seasons (and years) can race by, bringing death ever closer. Though the speaker never explicitly mentions the transitory nature of life, the poem's images make it clear that such concerns are on the speaker's mind.
The other way that the poem gets at the speaker's preoccupation with death is through his or her anxieties about sleep. The speaker seems to wish for sleep ("I am overtired"), but at the same time, the speaker worries about what's going on in the orchard. These anxieties come to a head as the speaker notes that "all [the apples] / That struck the earth" have been turned into cider, no matter how perfect they were when they fell. It's this thought that "will trouble" his or her sleep the most. That is, the speaker feels unable to fall asleep—or, perhaps, to die peacefully—when troubled by the inescapable knowledge that everything beautiful and pristine (like the perfect apples) must eventually be destroyed by death (just as the apples were turned into cider).
The speaker concludes this thought by saying the apples were "as of no worth"—that is, the unglamorous reality of death makes even wonderful things seem worthless. It's clear, then, that these thoughts upset and frighten the speaker, making any kind of sleep seem like a scary prospect.
However, a few key images suggest that the speaker does have some sources of hope amid this frightening contemplation. First, the poem opens with the image of the speaker's ladder pointed "toward heaven still," which suggests that the speaker has at least some belief in a heavenly afterlife. Perhaps even more importantly, this "heaven" seems to be attainable; the ladder is safely propped in the tree, and the speaker has obviously already put a lot of work into climbing it—the speaker still feels the "pressure" of its rungs in his or her feet.
Second, the speaker mentions the hibernation ("long sleep") of "the woodchuck" and wonders whether his or her own "sleep" might be similar—that is, whether there's a chance that the speaker could somehow return to life after dying, just as the woodchuck wakes up after months of hibernation. This return might be some kind of spiritual rebirth, or it might be the less literal regeneration of future generations' going on to tend the orchard after the speaker is gone.
Ultimately, the speaker doesn't know what death will be like—"whatever sleep it is." But by contemplating it and facing its frightening uncertainties, the speaker seems to have found inklings of hope that life and death are, perhaps, something like an orchard's seasons—there may be new cycles of regeneration that are as yet invisible to the speaker.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “After Apple-Picking”
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Lines 1-2
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,The poem's opening lines, in combination with its title, establish the setting: an apple orchard. The fact that the speaker has left a ladder in an apple tree suggests that the speaker has unfinished business, or perhaps was simply too beat after a long day of work to take the ladder down. In either case, even these early lines hint at the poem's overarching tone of worry and exhaustion.
Stylistically these lines also introduce the broken rhythm that readers will later understand mimics the process of falling asleep, with seemingly random thoughts and images floating through the speaker's mind. Yet even as the poem feels quite conversational and unpredictable, a pattern of alliteration (specifically of /l/, /t/, and /st/ sounds) adds to the poem’s sense of fluency, tying various words together despite the poem's unstructured feel:
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.The speaker also declares that the ladder is pointed "toward heaven," which, beyond simply being an interesting way to describe the ladder being upright in a tree, suggests certain religious overtones. Perhaps the ladder is a biblical allusion to Jacob's Ladder, a bridge between earth and heaven, life and death. The reference to "heaven" might also make the orchard setting itself evoke the Garden of Eden, a place of abundant life from which human beings were eventually cast out by God. This, in turn, sets the stage for reading the poem as a kind of allegory for the creative process itself—for the way in which the poet must hold fast to periods of creative abundance before being similarly cast out into the metaphorical wasteland of writer's block.
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Lines 3-8
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.
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Lines 9-13
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. -
Lines 14-17
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take. -
Lines 18-23
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. -
Lines 24-29
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. -
Lines 30-31
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. -
Lines 32-36
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. -
Lines 37-42
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.
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“After Apple-Picking” Symbols
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Apples
Apples appear throughout the poem as symbols of creative ideas or the products (that is, the "fruits") of one’s labor. The speaker wishes for a “great harvest,” but at the same time, the speaker feels overwhelmed by the “ten thousand thousand” apples that all need to be handled with care and thought. In other words, the apples convey that the speaker treasures creative work but also experiences it as a burden. After all, if the speaker doesn’t take good care of the apples, they’ll rot or be turned into cider, “As of no worth.” The speaker seems to fear causing a similarly sad fate for his or her creative projects, even as he or she is too tired to fight harder against that fate.
Apples—or perhaps the orchard more broadly—may also symbolize the cycle of life and death. Once the apples have been picked from the trees, the orchard appears dead until its rebirth in spring, at which point new apples blossom; new life replaces the old. The speaker’s preoccupation with the endless cycles of apples falling hints that the “sleep” he or she worries about may actually be death itself. In this case, the apples don’t just symbolize the speaker’s creative work—they also symbolize the speaker himself or herself, and perhaps all other human beings as well. It may be that the speaker is worried about creative output not just for its own sake, but also because leaving works of art (like this poem) behind is one small way to fight against the inevitability of death—to assert one's legacy before new life takes over.
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Sleep
On a literal level, this poem explores what it’s like to fall asleep—the way people drift in and out of consciousness and how thoughts seem to come into the mind of their own accord. Symbolically, however, sleep represents both restorative rest and death.
On the one hand, the speaker obviously needs to sleep in order to continue the work left undone in the orchard. The speaker even acknowledges being “overtired” and suggests that a long hibernation (like that of the woodchuck in winter) might be welcome. In this way, sleep seems to represent a time of creative dormancy, often necessary for an artist or writer after a particularly productive period.
On the other hand, the speaker also says that this much-needed sleep will be “troubled.” One reason for this worry seems to be the lingering sense of the orchard’s overwhelming work; the speaker can’t stop picturing the apples and their life cycles. But the speaker also seems to worry about what, exactly, this sleep will be like, saying “whatever sleep it is.” The speaker contrasts the idea of the woodchuck’s hibernation with a simpler “human sleep” and wonders about the differences between the two. It seems, then, that simply falling asleep at the end of the day is a symbolic stand-in for the much more mysterious sleep of death itself. Essentially, the speaker knows that death is inevitable and even necessary (just as the apples in the orchard must die so that new fruit can blossom), but because it’s such a mystery, it’s troubling to contemplate.
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Ladder
The ladder that the speaker leaves in the orchard subtly symbolizes the connection between earth and the afterlife, as well as the difficulty of bridging the gap between two.
The speaker starts by describing the ladder as literally pointing "toward heaven," making an explicit connection between earthly work (like picking apples) and ascending to heaven. This phrase also alludes to the biblical story of Jacob's ladder (Genesis 28.10 – 19), reinforcing the idea that the speaker is preoccupied with thoughts of death and the afterlife.
On the one hand, the symbol of the ladder suggests hope; after all, it gives the speaker a way out of the drudgery of the orchard and into heaven itself. But on the other hand, the speaker also associates the ladder with the "ache" (line 21) it creates in the speaker's feet, which makes it seems like a somewhat painful path. What's more, the ladder "sways" (line 23); it's not entirely stable. It seems, then, that the ladder represents both the possibility of an afterlife and the impossibility of knowing for sure how to get there.
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“After Apple-Picking” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Though the poem doesn't have a clear rhyme scheme, its language is still quite musical to the ear. This is in part because of alliteration, which appears relatively consistently throughout the poem, though often in a restrained, subtle way.
Often, the poem's alliteration echoes the content of the lines in which it appears. For example, in the first line, there is clear alliteration of the /l/ sound in “long” and “ladder.” This repeated, leisurely sound seems to almost lengthen the phrase itself. By contrast, the influx of /s/, /t/, and /st/ sounds in lines 1 and 2 pop out sharply, almost as if they're "sticking through" the line just as the ladder is "sticking through a tree toward heaven still."
There is also frequently alliteration of /a/ sounds, perhaps unsurprising given the title of the poem (which is itself alliterative: "After Apple-Picking"). This subtly evokes the presence of apples throughout the poem, perhaps reflecting how the speaker can't stop thinking about them.
Alliteration can also suggest a sense of fatigue, as the reader's ear may grow tired of hearing the same sound over and over. Note the alliteration (created in part through phrasal repetition) of /o/, /l/, and /h/ sounds line 26 and 27:
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too muchThere is also further consonance /l/ and assonance of /o/ sounds here, which, combined with the alliteration, create a sense of utter exhaustion. The long /o/ is like a repeated yawn, while the /l/ slows down the line itself. No wonder the speaker has had "too much" of this!
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Diacope
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Enjambment
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Hyperbole
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Extended Metaphor
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Anthropomorphism
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Metaphor
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Epizeuxis
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“After Apple-Picking” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Bough
- Essence
- Skimmed
- Drinking trough
- Hoary
- Russet
- Instep arch
- Cherish
- Spiked
- Stubble
Bough-
A large tree limb or branch.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “After Apple-Picking”
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Form
This poem consists of a single stanza of 42 lines. The generally free-flowing nature of the stanza establishes its conversational tone and also helps reflect the idea that the speaker is drowsing off (and, as such, isn't going to stick to a strict poetic form).
There are some structural units within the poem that seem to stand apart, however, that correlate with meaning. For example, an initial sestet (lines 1 to 6) introduces readers to the poem's circumstances: the speaker has been picking apples, and though there are a fair amount remaining in the trees, the speaker is not going to pick any more. Later, lines 9 to 13 arguably form a quintet as they present the incident of the speaker looking at the landscape through a pane of ice.
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Meter
The meter of many lines in "After Apple-Picking" is a rough version of iambic pentameter (a da DUM rhythm with five poetic feet, for a total of ten syllables per line). Robert Frost often favored this meter since it most nearly imitates the natural speech of rural New Englanders. However, the meter varies significantly throughout, often in a way that mirror's the ideas the speaker is expressing.
The poem does not begin with iambic pentameter, but rather with iambic hexameter (six iambs per line) in line 1:
My long | two-point- | ed lad- | der's stick- | ing through | a tree
Then, the very next line subverts the meter further, with just two iambs:
Toward heav- | en still
Then, the next several lines fall into a meter that's mostly iambic pentameter, though there are occasional variations and the pattern of stresses isn't particularly obvious. Take lines 3 and 4:
And there's | a bar- | rel that | I did- | 'nt fill
Beside | it, and | there may | be two | or threeA similar meter persists through line 13, suggesting that after a somewhat rocky start, the speaker has grown focused and able to express his or her thoughts steadily.
However, the meter shifts again in lines 14 through 17, which alternate between iambic dimeter and iambic pentameter:
But I | was well
Upon | my way | to sleep | before | it fell
And I | could tell
What form | my dream- | ing was | about | to take.In these lines, the speaker begins to describe the process of falling asleep. The varying lengths of the lines combined with their steady iambic forms creates a sense of gentle rocking that reflects this idea of sleep gradually arriving.
From this point on, the meter shifts frequently, continuing to mirror the speaker's changing mindset as he or she falls into a fitful sleep. For instance, line 18 has 11 beats, while line 19 has only six. Some lines (such as line 35) are still in steady iambic pentameter, creating a sense of tension between moments of clear thought and moments of sleepy confusion. This tug-of-war in the meter continues throughout the poem, highlighting the speaker's anxiety and giving the reader insight into his or her experience.
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Rhyme Scheme
“After Apple-Picking” has no reliable rhyme scheme.
The first four lines rhyme ABBA, while the next two lines form a rhyming couplet (CC). Lines 7, 8, and 9 rhyme in a DED pattern.
After these lines, however, the rhyme scheme follows no particular pattern. Sometimes three lines in a row will rhyme, while other times a line might stand alone without rhyming with any others. Some instances of individual rhymes show up in the following lines: 10 and 12, 13, 17, and 21, 14 - 16, 18 and 20, 24 and 26 (with a near-rhyme in line 23), 28 - 29, 31 - 32, 33 and 36, 39 and 41.
The poem’s lack of a definite rhyme scheme is contrary to Frost’s usually precise use of rhyme, so while the rhyme in this poem may seem random, it's certainly not insignificant. Rather, the scattered and broken rhymes (interspersed with occasional instances of clear, steady rhyme) mimic the speaker's confused mindset as he or she drifts uneasily off to sleep.
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“After Apple-Picking” Speaker
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"After Apple-Picking" does not reveal much about its speaker; for example, the reader doesn't learn the speaker's name, gender, or race. That said, the first-person speaker is similar to a persona that Robert Frost frequently chose to adopt in his New England poems: the farmer-sage, a wise person who lives simply and farms the land. This speaker observes the world, often with close attention to the details of nature, and reflects upon what he or she perceives. The speaker of "After Apple-Picking" is in many ways in keeping with this common feature of Frost's poetry.
More specifically, this poem's speaker is someone who is both devoted to work and troubled by the endless burden of it. On the poem's surface, this person works in an orchard, overwhelmed by the quantity of apples in the season's harvest. But on the level of the poem's extended metaphor, the speaker is also someone who engages in some kind of creative work, likely composing poetry like Frost himself. Following this metaphor, the "apples" are really creative ideas or projects; the speaker wishes for a "great harvest" of inspiration, but seems to be dismayed to find that it's impossible to actually follow through on that many ideas.
The speaker struggles to resolve this dilemma throughout the poem but is ultimately unable to do so, instead falling into a fitful sleep that, while badly needed, also keeps the speaker away from the work that he or she wants so badly to complete. What's more, the poem also hints that the speaker might be worried about more than just the burdens of work and creativity; the speaker's uncertainty about "whatever sleep" is coming suggests that perhaps the deeper mystery of death is also on the speaker's mind.
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“After Apple-Picking” Setting
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The broad setting of "After Apple-Picking" is a New England farm, specifically the apple orchard that the speaker has recently finished working in. The orchard is clearly indicated by the poem's title, its repeated mention of apples, and the first two lines where a ladder in a tree is mentioned. The season must be autumn, because apples are typically ready to harvest after the summer. The poem seems to move into the speaker's home as it progresses, and the speaker considers the day's work and his or her desire for sleep. This would further suggest that the poem takes place in the evening.
The fact that this is New England is implicit because, for one thing, this is one region where American apples are grown. Of course, the poem's broader context makes this explicit: "After Apple-Picking" appears in North of Boston, a book in which most of the work is set in New England. Also, the woodchuck (line 40) is an animal seen on New England farms.
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Literary and Historical Context of “After Apple-Picking”
Literary Context
“After Apple-Picking” appears in Frost’s second book of poems, North of Boston. This volume, which was published in 1915, contains many of the poems for which Frost is most famous—including “Home Burial,” “Death of the Hired Man,” and “Mending Wall.”
Robert Frost wrote poems in the modernist period of the early 20th century. While his work contains some modernist traits, Frost wrote mainly in more recognizable verse forms, often adhering to familiar rhythm and meter in ways that other modernists usually did not. Like the modernists, however, he incorporated a more natural diction into his work, generally using the regional diction of New England in the early 1900s. Frost also favored blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter. In the cases where Frost does use rhyme, it's usually secondary to the natural rhythms of New England speech.
But despite Frost's use of some features of modernism, he never aligned himself with any particular school of writing and was known for his unique style and willingness to incorporate aspects of a variety of poetic traditions. In particular, his existential themes and focus on the details of nature as metaphors for the human condition also connect his work to an earlier generation of New England poets, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson.
Frost’s years in England, from 1912 to 1915, put him in touch with a number of poets who would prove to be important influences. These poets include Robert Graves, W. B. Yeats, Rupert Brooke, Ezra Pound, and Edward Thomas. It was in this atmosphere of poetic exploration that Frost was able to perfect the use of metaphor, meter, and line that is evident in his first two books, A Boy’s Will and North of Boston, which were first published in England. It was Frost's friendship with Pound that led to the publication of his first two books of poems, and Pound's influence is also clear in Frost’s precise and focused imagery and meditations on an indifferent universe. Frost’s work is often compared to that of Robert Graves as well, in large part because both poets were more formal in their work than others of the modernist period. Both preferred to incorporate traditional lines, forms, rhythm, and meter into their poetry.
Historical context
Frost and his family lived on the thirty-acre "Derry Farm" in New Hampshire from 1900 until 1912, and Frost’s work is greatly influenced by those years. Frost's focus on the natural world in both his personal life and his writing is especially notable given the societal shifts toward industrialization and urbanization that were ongoing at the time this poem was written.
Though Frost wrote actively through some of the most important events of the 20th century, including both World Wars, he rarely addresses this historical context directly in his poetry. Instead, his poems often convey a sense of deeply personal unease that reflects the anxieties of a changing world through the lens of individuals' emotions. In the case of "After Apple-Picking," for example, the speaker's desire to stay awake and engaged with work (despite being completely exhausted) may be a subtle commentary on the challenges of keeping up with the ever-changing demands of an increasingly complex world at the turn of the century.
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More “After Apple-Picking” Resources
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External Resources
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Robert Frost's Biography — A summary of Frost's life as a poet and his publications.
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Quotes from Robert Frost — A collection of readers' favorite lines from Frost's writing.
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Robert Frost reads "After Apple-Picking" — An audio-recording of Robert Frost reading "After Apple-Picking," along with the text of the poem.
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"Robert Frost's America" — A 1951 Atlantic Magazine article providing an in-depth look at the people and region of Robert Frost's New England.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost
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