Here's some Frost for an autumn Friday. Do you think this is Robert Frost’s autumnal version of his well-known classic Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening? (I've got rungs to climb before I pick, rungs to climb before I pick.)
After Apple Picking
By 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 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.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
You can read the rest of the poem here.
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At Wild Rose Reader, I have a short acrostic for autumn. It’s all I could manage. I’ve been too busy watching news programs and reading political blogs lately.
Tricia has the Poetry Friday Roundup at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
5 comments:
Oh how I love Robert Frost. Thanks for posting this one today, Elaine.
This is one of my favorite Frost poems -- and so apt, since today's Johnny Appleseed's birthday!
I really love Robert Frost and always think of him in the winter and spring. This poem is new to me.
And I can't believe I missed Johnny Appleseed's birthday again!
That's a beauty, Elaine.
I had a professor in graduate school who asked all his students to memorize and be able to recite to the class over the course of the quarter 150 lines of poetry - with every century from the 13th to the 20th represented. Hard, but one of the best things I ever had to do in terms of learning to write. We were told to choose poems that we would want to remember on a desert island (or in solitary confinement, if we had criminal tendencies) when we would have no books with us, nothing but what was stored in our heads. Two of the poems I memorized were by Frost and were about apples - this was one, and the other was "Putting in the Seed." Here's a link to it:
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertfrost/12084
I'm with Kelly - Frost is one of the best - and he makes poetry sound like spoken language. What an accomplishment.
Thanks for commenting, everyone!
I have a book of all of Frost's poems--but I can't recall having read this poem before. I do love Frost's poetry.
Another poem I would have loved to post today is David McCord's "Up the Pointed Ladder." It's sad that McCord's poetry collections are still in print. I think he was the Frost of children's poetry.
Julie,
Thanks for the URL.
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