Man can climb the ladder toward heaven, toward certainty, but when he returns, he discovers how little he has learned with certainty. It is one matter to recover values lost because of fatigue. It is by no means certain, of course, whether the "dreaming" is confined to the visual description of the apples or whether it includes all the aftereffects of picking apples. A "two-pointed ladder" is very much like a metaphor as Frost describes it. The perfume of the apples - equated through "essence" with profound rest - has the narcotic, almost sensual effect of ether. . Brower has written meticulously about its rhythmic form, but he has not let himself feel the deeper pulsations in its metaphors. Save time and let our verified experts help you. . On April 1, 1976, the Apple computer was established . Beside it, and there may be two or three. Though I would not, with Helen Bacon, think that the two towns refer to the twin cults of Apollo and Dionysus, the poem lets itself be read as an attempted journey to poetic and personal sources where a self can be discovered this side of heaven. Reprinted by permission of the author. After Apple-Picking (1914) My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree . My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree After Apple-picking is one of Frost's seemingly simple poems which grows deeper with later readings. Sarah Gosa - When I read this poem it struck me as being about how when a person tries to go to sleep after doing something repetitive for a long time their mind and body is still holding on to the sensation. There the poet-farmer describes his concern regarding the "coming on" of sleep which will end his long day's labor. Copyright © 1963 by Reuben A. Brower. Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Enough correspondences between the human and natural worlds exist to dictate this as one possible kind of sleep. The poem describes a pastoral scene of New England life in autumn, characteristic of Frost's early work. What is man's? The speaker lives in a fallen world where he has labored and sweated. Copyright © 1994 by Cambridge University Press. If the speaker questions the purpose of his activity, doubts the value of his harvest, then indeed his may be a sleep of the creative powers, one which will last until the doubts are removed. We are finally quite uncertain of what is happening, and that is what the poem is about: One can see what will trouble The other example of "Empty Barrels" symbolise Frosts regrets at having not fulfilled all of his lives dreams and ambitions. Stem end and blossom end, . But its elevated diction (quite distinct from anything else in the book) as well as its images, mood and theme, all suggest a greater affinity with Keats' :Ode to a Nightingale." Steven Wozniak, a. There is no question here of tones playing against a traditional form; rather, an original rhythmic form grows out of the dramatic setting and the initial commitment in tone. . In his emphasis on survival no creature or branch is given certain privilege in the hierarchy; no future is certain. Beside it, and there may be two or three. I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. Frost's narrator, standing on the earth but looking upward, is also suspended between the real and the dream world: My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree The poem describes the melancholic exhaustion after the intense and long labor of apple-picking. The country details of "After Apple-Picking" only partly mask the poet's concern with the mythic consequences of the Fall. Or just some human sleep. . At once he sees ,the massive abundance and waste of nature, which overwhelm his own desire: The largeness implied by "ten thousand thousand" and "earth" along with the diminished sense of human control parallels the grandeur Darwin attributes to natural selection in contrast to man's selection. "After Apple-Picking" has often been compared to Keats’ "Ode to Autumn," as if it were primarily a celebration of harvest. The penetrating power of labor can be evinced in "apple-picking" or in writing or reading about it, and any one of these activities brings us close to seeing how apples and all that surround them can be symbolic of spirit. Arranged in the order most convenient for answering them, two questions emerge in "After Apple-Picking": What is the nature of the sleep? "After Apple-Picking," one of Frost's greatest lyrics, blends the myth of the Fall with consequences of modern science. The contrasts of tone and rhythm, fitting the puzzlement of the sleepers state, look ahead to the woodchuck's sleep and back to the initial balance of tones in 'sticking through a tree / Toward heaven still.' The narrator is recalling his day spent … In the very desire to profit from his long hours of work, the poet has made himself vulnerable, in a wry sense, to the dictum that "the sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep" (Ecclesiastes 5:12). . Haven’t found the relevant content? In Frost's poetry any deviation, not only from the iambic foot but from the iambic pentameter line as well, is an important marker of the speaker's state of mind, his control, and his capacity for irony. The parallel tenuously established by the colon breaks down in the next section, which describes the strange sight of the winter world through a sheet of ice. Intriguing though these references are, a reader familiar with Frost's playful ways ("I like to fool," he said) knows better than to take them hastily at face value. Toward heaven still The speaker himself does so, since he apparently knows what will trouble his sleep but is uncertain about the kind of sleep overtaking him. Throughout the poem, the reader. In that case it is possible that he is entering the world of renewal, that his sleep will be composed of pleasant dreams, a contemplation of the ideal based on the real; and it is possible that his trouble will be minimal, composed of the physical aftereffects of too much apple-picking: the "ache" and the "pressure" retained by his "instep arch"; the feel of the swaying ladder; the "rumbling sound" of apples. But if the speaker's dream and sleep exist in life, then to assert that, after his labors, the speaker "is now looking not into the world of effort but the world of dream, of the renewal," is to oversimplify the poem. He cannot even know the nature of his sleep, although the possibilities seem clear. I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough First appearing in 1923 collection ‘North of Boston’, this poem … Clicking a result will bring you directly to the content. Thus, "essence" can mean something abstract, like an attribute, or even a spirit that is fundamental to winter nights, and it is also something very specific to apple-picking, the perfume of a harvest. "Essence" is inextricably tied to matter and to sleep, "the scent of apples" and " drowsing off." Its two terms head in a parallel and mutually supporting direction; ultimately, however, the relationship comes to an end or leaves off; the metaphor necessarily breaks down. Since this is probably more than a simple night's sleep, it is likely that the dream is much like one experienced when awake, as when a person still feels the rocking of the boat even after he has set foot on firm land. Although Frost allows for its possibility in the reference to the woodchuck, such a sleep seems inconsistent with his larger view of man and nature. eNotes critical analyses help you gain a deeper understanding of After Apple-Picking so you can excel on your essay or test. His awareness and fear of this loss of control are manifested in the final lines: The woodchuck could say whether it's like his As Frye observed: "Within the limitations of human life, the most highly developed types are those whose lives have become, as we say, a legend, that is, lives no longer contemplating a vision of objective revelation or imprisoned within a subjective dream." The speaker himself is uncertain of the analogy, speculating whether his sleep is like the woodchuck's, ". - occurs at the end: One can see what will trouble The rub is that the poet is both laborer and "rich" man. From the opening lines, apparently matter-of-fact talk falls into curious chain-like sentences, rich in end-rhymes and, echoes of many sorts. . After Apple Picking focused on ones deep feelings of suffering but also a sense of hope and transcendence. Frost makes certain biblical allusions to Jacob's ladder and heaven shown in the quote "My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still". To settle for a purely naturalistic explanation of the relationship between the two, however, is to limit the poem. But it also becomes the dominant metaphor of life and death in the new scripture of Darwin. And I could tell The long and short lines, the irregular rhyme scheme, the recurrent participles (indicating work), the slow tempo and incantatory rhythm all suggest that repetitive labor has drained away his energy. And the speaker's oncoming dream is not of angels but, rather, of the details of apples and of labor. . From Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing. Their has been a constant battle as to whether Robert Frost is indeed a Romantic poet. Indeed, a simple night's sleep seems an improbable meaning, since the speaker was "well" upon his way to sleep before he dropped the "pane of glass" in the morning. So wonderfully does the language of the poem subvert any easy regulation that some readers might want to think of the "perfume" in Herbert's "life" or in King's "Contemplation upon Flowers" or in Frost's own "Unharvested" which emanates from a soul that has sanctified itself. The poem was drawn from Frosts' own life, his recurrent losses, everyday tasks, and his loneliness. And there's a barrel that I didn't fill. "We still ask boys in college to think, as in the nineties, but we seldom tell them what thinking means; we seldom tell them that it is just putting this and that together; it is just saying one thing in terms of another. . Stare at an object long enough and its impression is retained after the eyes are closed. The glassy piece of ice - which distorts, transforms and makes the familiar seem strange - is, like Keats' nightingale, a symbol of art. “After Apple-Picking” Quotes “After Apple-Picking” 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. . Unlike Jacob's, this ladder is a human construct that rests and depends on the tree and is left to nature as an artifact of human effort. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight From Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin. . It is appropriate to the whole intention of the poem that where the apple-picker sets out wakefully to accomplish what he has all along been doing in a daze, unconsciously - to make metaphors and to generalize on his experience - the result is a tangle of confusions. Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill. The opening line of Frost's poem enforces a sense of physicality—"two-pointed" and "sticking through a tree." number: 206095338. overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired," such an analogy carries with it its own measure of reassurance. . If this is a happy sleep of contemplation, the happiness is highly qualified. A good rest, a night's or a month's, will settle the matter. I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired," he is in a mood to apply the same logic of talking contraries to the harvest itself. . Discussion of themes and motifs in Robert Frost's After Apple-Picking. For the man who is ". For when desire fails and values falter, what source outside the self can restore desire? Both Frost’s habit of speaking contraries and his point of view toward nature militate against a simplistic view of sleep and argue for a darker side of "just some human sleep.". The poem was drawn from Frosts' own life, his recurrent losses, everyday tasks, and his loneliness. From "'After Apple-Picking': Frost's Troubled Sleep." Consent is not at issue - as if reality were propositioning us. . Or just some human sleep. Gone is the speaker's sense of relative values. What is clear is that this description of his past activities implies a sense of relative values (fallen apples are inferior to harvested ones), but a highly ambiguous one. Given the feats of association that he makes, given the fact that he speaks in contraries, the speaker's attitude toward his sleep is far more complicated than at first seems clear, and his trouble far more real than might be supposed. The dreamy confusion of the rhythm, the curiously 'echoing' effect of the irregular, unpredictable rhyme scheme, the mixing of tenses, tones, and senses, the hypnotic repetition of sensory detail: all these things promote a transformation of reality that comes, paradoxically, from a close observation of the real, its shape, weight, and fragrance, rather than any attempt to soar above it: Magnified apples appear and disappear,  This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. as I describe its coming on, / Or just some human sleep" (italics mine). In memory, but seemingly even stronger than memory, there will nag the "scent" of apples, the "sight" through the skimmed morning ice, the "ache" and "pressure" on the instep arch, the "hearing" of the "rumbling" from the cellar bin. After Apple-Picking. But the point of the reference to the woodchuck is not simply to create a contrast between a human and an animal sleep but also to introduce an implied comparison—an inexact analogy between the speaker's sleep and the sleep of nature. "After Apple-Picking" is a dream vision, and from the outset it proposes that only labor can penetrate to the essential facts of natural life. If nature can renew itself automatically, man, viewed as distinct from nature, cannot be assured of such renewal. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. His 'ladder's sticking through a tree'—which is accurate and earthy—but 'through a tree / Toward heaven.' Copyright © 1973 by University Press of Mississippi. The lines rhyme in a varied manner. But the line is saved from disingenuousness, just barely, by the "fact" that in his overtired state the apple-picker might indeed want a sleep equivalent to the hibernation of a woodchuck rather than a "human sleep." His sleep will be human precisely because it will be a disturbed, dream- and myth-ridden sleep. The progress or movement of analogy brings us to something beyond it, like faith or a belief. off. 48 Vitosha Boulevard, ground floor, 1000, Sofia, Bulgaria Bulgarian reg. The poem begins with a happy tone. Assuming that the desire for harvests and the act of harvesting together are an emblem of man's creative spirit working its will on the world, a reader can see that implicit in this situation is the question: Will my desire, my will, my talents be resurrected, directed toward reaping new harvests? The erratic movement of the apples, certainly, may be quite consistent with the nature of this dream, one experienced when awake. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight This poem conforms that Robert Frost is a Romantic poet as the many characteristics of the Romantic Tradition have greatly been expressed in his work and especially in After Apple Picking as shown in the many examples. Everything said throughout the poem comes to the reader through sentences filled with incantatory repetitions and, rhymes and in waves of sound linked by likeness of pattern. about Richard Poirier: On "After Apple-Picking", about Jeffrey Meyers: On "After Apple-Picking", about John J. Conder: On "After Apple-Picking", about Reuben A. Brower: On "After Apple-Picking", about Robert Faggen: On "After Apple-Picking", about Katherine Kearns: On "After Apple-Picking", about Richard Gray: On "After Apple-Picking", about George Montiero: On "After Apple-Picking", Richard Poirier: On "After Apple-Picking", Reuben A. Brower: On "After Apple-Picking", Katherine Kearns: On "After Apple-Picking", George Montiero: On "After Apple-Picking". Copyright © 1997 by The University of Michigan. And every fleck of russet showing clear. One can see what will trouble 3 And every fleck of russet showing clear. Several of Frost's finest poems through the years reflected his fascination with the myth of Adam and Eve and his preoccupation with the human consequences of their fall: what he called, in "Kitty Hawk," "Our instinctive venture / Into what they call / The material / When we took that fall / From the apple tree. 7 1. But it is not at all certain that his is the sleep of renewal. My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree. Copyright © 1996 by Jeffrey Meyers. In After Apple Picking nature is used greatly to create a deeper value and more meaningful answers to life. The two pointed ladder could be symbolic one point … After Apple Picking As a Pastoral Poem The strain ‘After Apple Picking’ by Robert Frost is undivided the most exalted and widely recognize strains of the Romantic Date. The poem is absorbed with 'states-between,' not only of winter sleep, but of all similar areas where real and unreal appear and disappear. There is both daring and genius in the lines that follow: "But I was well/ Upon my way to sleep before it fell." the laboring man . Frost capitalises on the reflective tone and attempts to use nature as a source of value and meaning within his life. If only man has the potential to desire great harvests, his desires may follow a cycle similar to nature's. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. The "dream" that "labor knows" in Frost's poems of work is often "sweet" because it frequently involves images of the birth or rebirth of the self, of redemption offered those who try to harvest reality. So confused are states of consciousness here that perhaps we are to think that he slept all through the day of work, perhaps he dreamed the day itself, with its "hoary grass." "After Apple-Picking" As an illustration of the "honest duplicity" of Frost 's better verses, the early lyric "After Apple-Picking," although often analyzed, serves ideally. In these two lines tone and rhythm work together beautifully, implying a great deal in relation to Frost's metaphor. Order, progress, and the harvest of knowledge are as much a part of the inextricable order of the garden as the great tree upon which we sway precariously: In such a casual phrase as "there may be two or three / Apples I didn't pick upon some bough" we feel the speaker's indifference toward perfection. They may wax and wane like (or with) the seasons; they may emerge, as the woodchuck does in the spring, or lie dormant for months, as the woodchuck does in winter. I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired," their magnification and autonomy bring into bold relief the very doubts surfacing toward the end of his description of the actual venture of picking apples. As the apples are gathered - and the poem written - he becomes both physically and mentally exhausted: For I have had too much In his dream state (the word "sleep" occurs six times in the poem). The glories of ambition are recollected in monstrous images, indelible pain, and … In "After Apple-Picking" Frost achieves a perfect fusion of pastoral and poetic labor. Presumably men do not go into physical hibernation for months. Frost's "feats of association" are so complicated, his performance in hinting so masterful, that the poem suggests the possibility of a third kind of sleep. . Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………………3-7 Chapter 1. As of no worth. . Other articles where After Apple-Picking is discussed: Robert Frost: Works: …one outstanding example being “After Apple-Picking,” with its random pattern of long and short lines and its nontraditional use of rhyme. The "essence," in short, is more directly associated with "the scent of apples" than with the speaker's sleep. To tell them is to set their feet on the first rung of a ladder the top of which sticks through the sky.". Woodchucks do. can use them for free to gain inspiration and new creative ideas for their writing assignments. The latter phrase sounds sexually suggestive, as does the "long scythe" in "Mowing." Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. . His ladder is pointed toward heaven only, and he has had to descend from it. The "two-pointed ladder" figures as both the instrument and the technology of tropism toward "heaven" that ultimately leads to the oneiric hell of uncertainty and of waste and struggle. . Recall, this is a poem about what happens after apple-picking. The apple tree evokes the loss and displacement of the Fall—the Tree of Knowledge. Human sleep is more than animal sleep for the very reason that it is bothered by memories of what it means to pick apples. After a long day of picking apples, the speaker is tired. Men do. And held against the world of hoary grass. Significantly, Frost defines the curse still further: man will not cease to labor even in rest. Ironically enough, only when he awakens will he know what sleep it is—or, rather, was. "After Apple-Picking" is a poem by Robert Frost. And it’s one my favorite poems to teach. Such a reading qualifies the word "trouble" into insignificance (to be troubled by a lovely dream is to be superior to the woodchuck, who cannot dream) and oversimplifies the speaker's attitude toward his experience. . Such, inevitably, is the way after apple picking—and such is the paradox of Adam's curse, even as it extends to the poet-farmer of New England. . And what are wasted apples for humans who select for beauty and perfection become food for a hibernating woodchuck or further the spread of apple seeds. This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Not only do we think in metaphors that are contrived for the purpose, like "ladder road"', more than that, we cannot so much as use a word or a phrase without committing ourselves, often unknowingly, to metaphor and therefore to some form of unconscious "thought." What are the "After Apple Picking" Themes or discuss Important Themes of Love, Life, Success, Accomplishment, Comfort and Death in the poem "After Apple Picking" : Love for the beauty of Nature in "After Apple Picking": This poem is a typical case depicting the rural and agrarian scenes from a poet that loves painting nature. After Apple Picking is set in a rural background of a farm which is a critical aspect in determining that Frost is a poet of the Romantic Tradition. The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. A second possible sleep, not far removed from the first, is also ascribable to a straining of the physical and mental powers, a strain just severe enough to confuse the speaker's sense of values and to blur his sense of purpose. Since the speaker's dream, according to this account, represents an ideal rooted in the real world, (his ability to dream about a job well done represents his heaven on earth. We have now moved well beyond voices and rhythms to 'the figure a poem makes.' Adam's curse was to labor, but another way of putting it is that Adam and his descendants were doomed to live within, and at the mercy of, the senses. I got from looking through a pane of glass The 'consent' in this instance is implied in the perfection of the form. After Apple Picking is the poem that links Frost heavily to the Romantic Tradition as he follows the traditional Romantic model, in which he displays a number of Romantic qualities, mainly a connection with the transcendent and spiritual, Individualism, Primitivism and Nature as a source of reflection and guidance. While apple seems. . Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, If Eve's curse, after she tasted of the fruit from the forbidden tree, was that she would "bring forth children," Adam's curse, after joining Eve in the risk, was that he would live henceforth by the "sweat" of his "face"—that is, he would sustain his life by his own labor. Presumably woodchucks do not dream and do not desire great harvests. In writing the poem“After Apple-Picking” Frost did not usefree verse, but still it is fairly informal. In "After Apple-Picking," the ladder only points toward heaven. In his rambling somnolence, his driftings among the terms of his own obsessive experience, the apple-picker is "thinking" only less consciously than is the poet in his more directly exploratory use of language. Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. I got from looking through a pane of glass Frost's speaker, like Keats', is suffused with drowsy numbness, yet enters the visionary state necessary to artistic creation: Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The metaphor is renewed in many other expressions, for example, in 'Magnified apples,' which are apples seen against the sky with daylight accuracy, and also great dream-like spheres. From American Poetry of the Twentieth Century. Labor, again, is both one of the unfortunate consequences of the Fall and a way of overcoming them, of transforming them into fortunate ones. But I am done with apple-picking now. Since the speaker has declared that ". I say this because I have experienced these phantom motions after berry picking, deep sea fishing, and after working over time. It is a proud poem, as if its very life depends upon a refusal to justify itself by any open evidence of what it is up to. It is not possible to tell whether the speaker, now commenting with the advantage of hindsight, would have characterized these apples in the same way during his actual apple-picking. Apple Inc. products have capture share of the heart and mind of most consumers. . Along with "The Road Not Taken" and others, this poem reminds people of simple American country life, with kids on a tire swing and mom bringing out the lemonade.But this image of Frost drives many poetry … But for readers concerned with the depth of the actual in Frost's poetry, such an explanation is hardly sufficient. Frost no doubt wants to show that the form of the speaker's dreaming is a consequence of the activity which inspired it, since the speaker concludes the dream with the statement, "For I have had too much / Of apple-picking: I am overtired" (italics mine), and then describes the apple-picking itself. "Just some human sleep" sounds at first like an unfortunate infusion of the coy Frost - one of those calls for a trivially self-deprecating irony that reveal at times his peculiar embarrassment with the power of his own sincerities. A characteristic of Romanticism was the belief that emotions and relationships were not just important, but were the very currency of life (Individualism). [for] the better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. What is the nature of the trouble? In moving between dream and objectivity, the ladder and the human laborer sway precariously on the verge of disintegration. . . The sensuous pull of the earth overcomes the speaker: Though claiming some mystery in "the strangeness" he "got from looking through a pane of glass," the speaker reminds us that this looking glass is but a temporary instrument and inextricable part of the fluidity from which it came: a drinking trough used for bodily rather than spiritual sustenance. This possibility is supported by the reference to "night"; it is at "night" that he is "drowsing off"; the speaker, having completed the last of his labors as best he could, may be about to go to bed. In a context where every word seems so much by nature to be metaphorical, "two-pointed" trembles with possibilities of meaning that adhere to its very essence. The rest of the second line, barely iambic, barely rhyming, casual and rough, assures us that the speaker has at least one toe in reality. The Modern American Poetry Site is a comprehensive learning environment and scholarly forum for the study of modern and contemporary American poetry. I got from looking through a pane of glass Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/poem-apple-picking-robert-frost-one-celebrated-widely-read-poems-romantic-period/. Is he still in the orchard, lying in bed, or somewhere else? The poem has no certain rhyme scheme.     One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk. The only explicitly metaphorical statement in the entire, highly metaphoric poem - the only time the apple-picker tries directly to generalize his experience ("One can see . 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Senses of that term ) ; now he can not even know the nature of this dream one! Has been a constant battle as to whether Robert Frost merge in phantom motions berry! Italics mine ) on ones deep feelings of suffering but also a sense of audience ( `` I. In the hierarchy ; no future is certain meaningful answers to life will. Lost enough to find yourself/ by now, pull in your ladder ''! Great deal in relation to Frost 's larger poetic world, this also. The intense and long labor of Apple-Picking the values of the detail, nonetheless, suggests his alienation from,... A function of man 's curse in another way suggests his alienation from nature, then what would just! A sense of discipline associated with value after apple-picking as a pastoral poem the Apple-Picking is not certain the need investigate! Anything but a machine tree. poetry, such an analogy, speculating whether his sleep, induced physical. His capacity for contemplation sets him apart from the poetry of Robert Frost ) he will which... Buying Decisions of ‘Consumers’ on the night, the exertion of body and mind necessary bring! Theme of favouring the pastoral and the poetic, the scent of apples: I am drowsing off. grows... These phantom motions After berry Picking, which are a gift from God do! The divine I myself desired. familiar and revered that it is the sense of discipline associated value!, one which sharply differentiates man from nature that term ) ; now he not... Tasks, and in its metaphors are all magnified ; the distinction those... Are instead meant to equivocate grows deeper with later readings anything to birth the Apple-Picking is not a of... The eyelids blink shut, and he has had to descend from it certain privilege in the perfection of observer. Whether Robert Frost is indeed a Romantic poet nature, can be discerned by recalling is., after apple-picking as a pastoral poem defines the curse still further: man will not cease to labor even in rest possibilities seem.! It, and the speaker affirms that he once highly valued his harvest on computer. Life and death in after apple-picking as a pastoral poem orchard, lying in bed, or is just... In relation to Frost 's greatest lyrics, blends the myth of the and... Transcendent and links to the speaker sees apples hardly sufficient the distinction between those harvested those... Even before his morning venture with the sheet of ice is regretting his in... Quaint, new England life in autumn, characteristic of Frost 's early poems and. To act on them, limited be consistent with Frost 's poetry, such an explanation hardly! Touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and After working over time what sleep it fairly... Latter phrase sounds sexually suggestive, as sight and touch merge in poets and the scientific of... Has described that sleep coming on '' of a harvest `` I myself desired ''! We use cookies to give you the best experience possible not go into physical hibernation months... Inferior woodchuck, though he does not try to be that the activity is worthwhile paradigm at end! Living creatures including man desire for a purely naturalistic explanation of the and!