Latest / The Daily Poem / Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking”

Transcript

Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” · The Daily Poem

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, October 21st, 2026.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by Robert Frost, and it's called After Apple Picking.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: For me, this is the most Robert Frosty of Robert Frost poems.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is rural and agrarian.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Trees are involved.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: But mostly, it captures this thin...
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a gossamer veil that Frost is able to achieve or to stretch out
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: between what is utterly mundane,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: someone doing an honest,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: hard day's work and being deliriously tired afterwards, and things divine.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: The end of life,
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: the transmigration of souls,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: the last judgment,
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: it's all right there under the surface,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: but there's enough plausible deniability that you couldn't pick up this poem
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: and take it to court and accuse it of being an allegory.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it's still...
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Invites you to see those things,
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: like the sheet of ice that the speaker picks up and looks through.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's this distortion of the appearance of normal things,
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: but behind the normal appearance of normal things...
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Rost sees the deeper things that we cannot grasp in his mind clearly or objectively.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: We must merely intuit them through our normal sensory experience.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So is this speaker falling asleep?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is he having dreams and visions?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or is he passing into the next life, losing his grip on this one?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Contemplating the fate of his soul,
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: is the ladder in the opening lines, Jacob's ladder, the ladder of divine ascent?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is he contemplating how far up he has been able to travel in this life,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: or simply taking stock of a day's work?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is he headed toward some long and metaphysically transformational sleep at the end
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: of the poem, or just some human sleep?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the poem, After Apple Picking.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: My long two-pointed ladders sticking through a tree toward heaven still,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: and there's a barrel that I didn't fill beside it,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: and there may be two or three apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am done with apple picking now.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Essence of winter sleep is on the night, the scent of apples.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am drowsing off.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough and held against the world
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: of hoary grass.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: It melted, and I let it fall and break.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I was well upon my way to sleep before it fell,
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: and I could tell what form my dreaming was about to take.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Magnified apples appear and disappear,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: stem end and blossom end, and every fleck of russet showing clear.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: My instep arch not only keeps the ache, it keeps the pressure of a ladder round.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: and I keep hearing from the cellar bin the rumbling sound of load on load
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: of apples coming in, for I've had too much of apple picking.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, cherish in hand, lift down and not let fall.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: For all that struck the earth,
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: no matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: went surely to the cider-apple heap as of no worth.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: One can see what will trouble this sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Were he not gone,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: the woodchuck could say whether it's like his long sleep,
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: as I describe its coming on, or just some human sleep.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back tomorrow with more poetry.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: you can find us at dailypoempod.substack.com to listen to past episodes of the show,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: leave your own thoughts and comments,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: or become a subscriber and supporter of The Daily Poem.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, for all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.