“After Apple-Picking” Introduction

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“After Apple-Picking” Summary

“After Apple-Picking” Themes

• 

  Worry, Work, and Sleep

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• 

  Creativity and Dissatisfaction

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• 

  The Cycle of Life and Death

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “After Apple-Picking”

• Lines 1-2

  My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
  Toward heaven still,

  

  

  

  

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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.

  

  

  

  

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• 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.

  

  

  

  

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• 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.

  

  

  

  

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• 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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 30-31

  There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
  Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

  

  

  

  

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• 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.

  

  

  

  

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• 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

• 

  Apples

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• 

  Sleep

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• 

  Ladder

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“After Apple-Picking” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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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

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• Bough
• Essence
• Skimmed
• Drinking trough
• Hoary
• Russet
• Instep arch
• Cherish
• Spiked
• Stubble

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “After Apple-Picking”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“After Apple-Picking” Speaker

“After Apple-Picking” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “After Apple-Picking”

More “After Apple-Picking” Resources

• External Resources

  • Robert Frost's Biography — A summary of Frost's life as a poet and his publications.

  • Quotes from Robert Frost — A collection of readers' favorite lines from Frost's writing. 

  • Robert Frost reads "After Apple-Picking" — An audio-recording of Robert Frost reading "After Apple-Picking," along with the text of the poem.

  • "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.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost

  • Acquainted with the Night

  • A Roadside Stand

  • Birches

  • Desert Places

  • Design

  • Dust of Snow

  • Fire and Ice

  • Home Burial

  • Mending Wall

  • Mowing

  • My November Guest

  • Nothing Gold Can Stay

  • Out, Out—

  • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

  • The Death of the Hired Man

  • The Oven Bird

  • The Road Not Taken

  • The Sound of the Trees

  • The Tuft of Flowers

  • The Wood-Pile