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After Apple Picking
Robert Frost
- 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 shake the shimmer from
my sight
- I got from looking through a
pane of glass
- I skimmed this morning from the
water-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
reappear,
- 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.
- 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,
- 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.
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