After Apple Picking By Robert Frost Reference Context Explanation for BA BSc English Notes Short Stories

 

Robert Frost:

Robert Frost was born in 1874 and died in 1963. The most American of poets he was first recognized as a poet not in his own country but abroad and his first two books were published in England. When the first set of poems came out the English reviewers were captivated by Frost's unaffected lyrics, his simple vocabulary, and sharp observation. He developed a reputation for "Turning the Living Speech of men and women into poetry". [W.W. Gibson].

Idea of Poem:

In this poem, the world of reality and dreams is strangely intermingled. The poet has been collecting his harvest of apples: he has had a wonderful harvest, "there were ten thousand, thousand fruit to touch..." he now, feels tired. The fatigue coupled with the over-powering scent of apples makes him drowsy and even before he falls to sleep he knows what form his dreams will take...he will see his load of apples, magnified, as it were and he will hear the rumbling of apples emptied out of their barrels. While relinquishing his hold on the conscious self, the poet wonders about the nature of sleep.." whatever sleep it is." The question that poses itself is: "Is this sleep the ordinary, everyday sleep? or is it the sleep of death? All these possibilities are suggested and the poet leaves the question unanswered leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions. We feel that the poet would like it to be "just some human sleep."

Reference: 

These lines have been taken from the poem “After Apple-Picking” written by Robert Frost.

Context: 

The poem, After Apple-Picking, begins with the expression of the thoughts of the speaker, an apple-picker, after a day of apple-picking. Having picked apples throughout the day, he is tired now. His day’s work is over, but the task of apple-picking is not yet complete. The speaker tells that his long ladder still stands ‘sticking through a tree’, rising high toward heaven. He seems to have left it there on purpose to do some more apple-picking later.

Stanza

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,

Explanation:

Beside the ladder, there is a barrel that has not yet been filled with apples and can accommodate some more. A few apples may still have been left on the branches of the tree unpicked or yet to be picked. That means, the task of apple-picking is incomplete. But, as the speaker tells, he is fed up with or tired of apple-picking, and does not feel like doing this work anymore.

Stanza

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.

Explanation:

The speaker feels tired. The scent of apples, which is the ‘essence of winter-sleep’, causes drowsiness to him, and he begins to drowse off. While falling asleep he recollects the sense of strangeness that was experienced by him at the right he saw in the morning by looking through a sheet of ice which he had picked up from his drinking vessel (trough). He looked at ‘the world of hoary grass’ or (grass covered with snow) through this sheet. It seems as if the speaker were in a confused state of mind because of the onslaught of sleep on him that sent him into a trance in which everything seemed to have been blurred or made indistinct to view.

Stanza

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

Explanation:

The sheet of ice melted, and the speaker allowed it to fall down from his hands, and break into pieces. However, before it fell down, he was just on the verge of falling asleep. In this sleepy state, he was able to tell what form his dreaming was to take place, or what kind of dreams he was about to see in his sleep.

Stanza

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.

Explanation:

These lines describe the dream of the speaker. The dream comprises ‘an exaggerated recreation of the sensations of apple-picking experienced during the day’, Apples of an enlarged size appear and disappear everywhere – at the end of the stem and at the end of the flowering part of the tree. The speaker sees even the most tiny apples and their colours clearly in the dream. His feet do not feel only pain, but also the pressure of the ladder-round. As he picks the apples, the boughs bend down, and with their movement the ladder also seems to sway. The speaker has given here a picturesque description of the dreamland in which he finds himself in his tranced state.

Stanza

And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin 

That 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, 

Explanation:

From the depiction of the right around him, the poet-speaker turns to a description of the sound. From the ‘cellar bin’, he keeps hearing the ‘rumbling sound’ of carts carrying ‘load on a load of apples’. There is an abundance of apples, and there are tens of thousands of them for him to touch, admire and to pick or lift carefully so as not to let any of them fall down on the ground. Since the speaker has already done enough of apple-picking he feels overtired and fed up with the bumper harvest he has himself desired so much in the past. He does not want anything to do with the apples.

Stanza

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.

Explanation:

The apples are not to be allowed to fall from the hands of the speaker, because all such apples as happen to fall down on the ground, are treated as discarded or rejected, even if they may not have been ‘bruised or spiked with stubble.; They are set aside in heaps to be used for making cider and are not regarded as fit or of any worth as eatable fruits.

Stanza

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.

Explanation:

In these concluding lines of the poem, the poet-speaker guesses as to what will trouble his sleep, whatever kind of sleep it may be. His sleep may be troubled by the thought or awareness of the reality which has been ignored in the dream. If the wood chunk (a rodent) has not gone to his long sleep for the winter, it would be able to explain the nature of the poet’s sleep and to tell whether it is a long sleep, which may resemble its own torpor or hibernation, or just an ordinary sleep commonly loved by all human beings. The sleep may be a simple sleep or the sleep of death.