Robert Frost 's Poem After Apple Picking

     Frost?s poem delves deeper into the being and essence of life with his second set of lines. The first line states, ?Her early leaf?s a flower.? After the budding and sprouting, which is the birth of nature, is growth into a flower. This is the moment where noon turns to evening, where childhood turns into maturity, and where spring turns into summer. At this very moment is the ripe and prime age of things. The young flower stands straight up and basks in the sun, the now mature teenager runs playfully in the light, and the day and sunlight peak before descending ever so quickly into dusk. The second line of the second set states, ?But only so an hour,? which makes clear that yet again time is passing by and that a beginning will inevitably have an end.

Frost’s poem has a great sense of irony towards the end, “I shall be telling this with a sigh / somewhere ages and ages hence” (16-17). The irony is that while he’s making his choice he is already anticipating how he will tell the story in the future, almost adding a sense of drama

Frost uses a multitude of poetic devices, including metaphors, irony, symbolism, hyperbole, and personification “Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. to vividly reinforce the desolation in the mind and the surroundings of the speaker. The uncertainty of the time in the end is a reflection of the uncertainty in the duration of isolation that the speaker would have to continue to endure. In conclusion, this poem displays the transition into night figuratively as the author experiences a broken heart. I have been one acquainted with the night.” (V,2 ). This is a beautiful and dark poem that describes the somber emotions that an individual endures after a separation. This poem can be relatable to anyone as we all have experienced some type of sorrow. Hopefully after experiencing something of this nature we can see the bright lights after being acquainted with the

Robert Frost is a twentieth-century American poet, famous for his unique style and American influence. Throughout his life, Frost had experienced severe losses to both his family and his livelihood. Despite those challenges, Frost used his experiences to fuel his passion for poetry. This is reflected in many of his works, as they portray themes of death to bring out the significance of moments in life. In the poems “Reluctance”, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “After Apple-Picking”, and “An Old Man’s Winter”, he explores such themes of mortality and uses it to tell meaningful stories.

Frost also uses the trees in this poem to represent a way to get away from the cares and trials of life on Earth. He talks of getting away and coming back to start over as if climbing “towards heaven”. He desires to be free from it all, but then he says that he is afraid that the fates might misunderstand and take him away to never return. This is like most of us today. We want to go to Heaven, but we don’t want to die to get there.

“Final sleep” is certainly one interpretation of the “long sleep” that the poet contrasts with human sleep. The sleep of the woodchuck is the sleep of winter, and winter, in the metaphoric language of seasons, has strong associations with death. He is ‘done with apple picking’, suggests finality; a sudden unpleasant realisation that he has not grasped all that he set out to achieve. Subsequently, Frost wants individuals to evaluate their life and discover their dreams and meaning in their life.

is saying, and Frosts personal pain that he is suffering from that he ingrains into this poem. The

Robert Frost exemplifies death through out all three of his poems. The first one, "After Apple Picking", was a little harder to get the idea that he was referring to death. Frost changes his structure of the poem from literally talking about apple picking to talking about the seasons changing and death. When he writes, "Upon my way to sleep before it fell, / And I could tell / What form my dreaming was about to take", he is referring to his death. The poem takes place while he is dreaming and then when he is done apple picking is when he dies. Frost doesn't give readers the truthful ending but that is just apart of his style. "Birches" was written in such a way that he uses the young boy climbing the tree to represent heaven but once he is

One sees a swaying tree, then more trees behind it create a dark forest, and finally a boy enters the picture as the cause of the swaying. In lines four and five he speaks directly to the reader bringing him or her further into the poem, making it so that they can claim the experience described as their own.

Robert Frost is an iconic poet in American literature today, and is seen as one of the most well known, popular, or respected twentieth century American poets. In his lifetime, Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, and the Congressional Gold Medal. However, Robert Frost’s life was not always full of fame and wealth; he had a very difficult life from the very beginning. At age 11, his father died of tuberculosis; fifteen years later, his mother died of cancer. Frost committed his younger sister to a mental hospital, and many years later, committed his own daughter to a mental hospital as well. Both Robert and his wife Elinor suffered from depression throughout their lives, but considering the premature deaths of three of their children and the suicide of another, both maintained sanity very well. (1)

Even in the earlier days of Robert Frost’s long arduous active life, he looked upon the journey of life in a more seiner way. Where most of the younger crowd may prefer a “happy go lucky” approach to life, Frost invested his every adapting yet inspiring mind into mysteries and the choices we come across in life, the issues of mortality and morals, and one’s view of death are explored in such a way, one may find it difficult but to be inspired by his work.

Poetry is a literary medium which often resonates with the responder on a personal level, through the subject matter of the poem, and the techniques used to portray this. Robert Frost utilises many techniques to convey his respect for nature, which consequently makes much of his poetry relevant to the everyday person. The poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ and “The mending wall” strongly illuminate Frost’s reverence to nature and deal with such matter that allows Frost to speak to ordinary people.

In the poem “After Apple-Picking”, Robert Frost has cleverly disguised many symbols and allusions to enhance the meaning of the poem. One must understand the parallel to understand the central theme of the poem. The apple mentioned in the poem could be connected to the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. It essentially is the beginning of everything earthly and heavenly, therefore repelling death. To understand the complete meaning of Frost’s poem one needs to be aware that for something to be dead, it must have once had life. Life and death are common themes in poetry, but this poem focuses on what is in between, life’s missed experiences and the regret that the speaker is left with.

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “ The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.

Poems are one of the oldest forms of literary expression often times including complex themes. The poem “Come in” by Robert Frost is no exception. The poem provides us with his experience going into the woods, which represent death. The theme of the poem is a description of Frost’s encounter with his personal feelings and emotions, in which he uses “the woods” as a symbol to express what he is feeling. In the poem “Come In”, Robert Frost’s symbolism via birds, and light, imagery of the woods, constant use of metaphors and similes, line breaks, rhyme, and overall sad tone, illustrates the darkness of his thoughts, feelings, and general experiences in his desire to