9. After Apple-Picking / North of Boston(1914) - Robert Frost

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.

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.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

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.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The 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.  

사과를 따고 나서

내 긴 사닥다리의 두 끝은 나무를 뚫고

하늘을 향해 뻗어 있다.

그 옆에는 아직 채우지 않은

통이 하나 있다. 어떤 가지에는

따지 않은 사과가 두세 개씩 있을 게다.

그러나 나는 이제 사과 따기를 끝냈다.

겨울잠의 정기, 사과의 향기가

밤에 서려있다. 나는 지금 졸고 있다.

내가 오늘 아침 물통에서 걷어낸

얼음장을 손에 쥐고 그것을 통해

허옇게 서리 맞은 풀을 보았던 때의

기이한 광경이 계속 내 눈에 아른거린다.

얼음장은 녹았고, 나는 그것을 떨어뜨려 깨뜨렸다.

그러나 나는 그것이 떨어지기 전에

벌써 잠이 들고 있었다.

그리고 나는 내 꿈이 어떤 형태의 꿈이 될지

알 수 있었다.

확대된 사과들이 나타났다 사라진다.

꼭지 끝 그리고 꽃 끝,

그리고 적갈색 반점이 모두 뚜렷이 보인다.

나의 발등은 아직도 아플 뿐만 아니라,

사다리 발걸이의 압력마저 간직하고 있다.

나는 가지가 휠 때 사다리가 흔들리는 것을 느낀다.

그리고 지하실 창고에서는

무수한 사과들이 쿵쿵 소리 내며

계속 들어오는 소리가 들린다.

나는 너무 많은 사과를 따

나 스스로 원했던

풍작에 지쳐버렸다.

수십만 개나 되는 사과를 만지고,

손으로 쓰다듬고, 똑 떼어내어, 떨어뜨리지 않으려 했다.

왜냐하면 땅에 떨어진 것은,

모두

멍이 들거나 그루터기에 찔리지 않았다 해도

쓸모없는 것으로

사과주용 더미로 보내버리기 때문이다.

나의 이 잠, 그것이 어떤 잠이건 간에,

편한 잠은 안 될 것 같다.

들쥐가 아직 가지 않았다면,

나에게 오고 있는 이 잠이

그의 긴 동면과 같은 것인지,

또는 인간의 잠에 불과한지 말할 수 있으리라. 

-신재실 옮김- 

단상(斷想): 이 시는 노동의 의의를 과거, 현재, 미래의 위상에서 보다 구체적이고 종합적으로 파악하고 있다. 처음 8행은 사과 따기의 완료를 지적하고 우여곡절 끝에 다다른 수확의 기쁨이 “겨울잠의 정기, 사과의 향기”로 요약된다. 육체적 피로로 졸고 있지만 그 졸음은 겨울잠의 정기 즉 사과 향기로 어우러진 즐거움에 도취된 졸음이다.

그 다음 9행은 수확이 끝난 이후의 시간을 전망한다. 얼음장을 통해 본 허옇게 서리 맞은 세계는 기이하기만 하다. 이것은 물론 육체적 피로에서 오는 물리적 현상이기도 하지만 성큼 다가온 겨울 앞에서 느끼는 심리적 불안의 결과이기도 하다. 그러나 이러한 불안은 얼음과 함께 녹아 없어지고 벌써 시작된 꿈의 내용을 예상하고 있다. 이 꿈은 과거를 회상하는 꿈이다.  

사과 따기의 과정이 시각, 청각 그리고 근육운동의 이미지들로 멋지게 묘사되고 있다. 휴식의 계절을 앞둔 불안도 잠깐이고 수확의 기쁨에 도취된 화자는 지나간 노동을 꿈속에 재현시키며 실존적 존재에 부과된 땀 흘리는 노동이 인간생활의 즐거움임을 되새겨 본다. 확대되어 나타났다 사라지는 뚜렷한 적갈색의 사과들은 기쁨을 한층 더하고 지하철 창고에 쿵쿵 굴러드는 사과의 소음은 풍작을 확인한다. 그러기에 아직도 느끼는 사다리의 압력과 발등의 아픔 그리고 스스로 원했던 풍작에 지쳐 다 거두지 못한 아쉬움도 즐겁기만 하다.  

노동과 수확의 기쁨과 의미를 현재, 미래, 과거로 시점을 옮겨가며 명상하고 나서 이 시의 결론 부는 인간의 잠과 동물의 잠을 대조함으로써 인간성의 일면을 확인한다. “나의 이 잠, 그것이 어떤 잠이건 간에,/ 편한 잠은 안 될 것 같다./ 들쥐가 아직 가지 않았다면,/ 나에게 오고 있는 이 잠이/ 그의 긴 동면과 같은 것인지,/ 또는 인간의 잠에 불과한지 말할 수 있으리라. 인간의 잠은 꿈에 어지럽지만, 들쥐의 긴 잠은 본능적 동면에 불과하다. 들쥐의 오랜 잠은 봄의 도래와 함께 다시 깨어남이 예정되어 있지만 인간의 오랜 잠은 곧 죽음이다. 화자의 잠을 어지럽히는 꿈은 지나간 수확의 즐거움과 함께, "허옇게 서리 맞은 풀"이 상징하는 노쇠로 다가올 죽음에 대한 불안이 섞여있다. 다 같이 지상에 발을 붙이고 있으면서도 실존의 의미를 인식하고 있는 깨어 있는 인간과 그렇지 않은 동물과의 잠이 묘하게 대조되고 있다. 

이 시의 첫 두 줄이 암시하는 것처럼 시인 프로스트는 하늘(heaven)에 대한 관심을 버린 적이 없다. 하지만 「자작나무」("Birches")의 화자를 통해서 프로스트는 “땅은 사랑을 위한 알맞은 장소 / 여기보다 더 좋은 곳이 어디 또 있을까”(ll. 52-53)라고 말한다. 하늘을 동경하면서도 땅에서의 삶의 탐구에 주력하는 실존 시인 프로스트의 면모를 알 수 있다. 인간의 소망에도 불구하고 사후의 세계는 인간이 땅에 존재하는 한 영원히 알 수 없다. 이런 한계를 벗어날 수 없는 것이 실존이다. 인간이 알 수 있고 또 사랑을 쏟아야 하는 곳은 하늘이 아닌 땅이다. 동물은 자연 순환의 리듬에 그대로 순응하는 것으로 존재의 의미를 다하지만, 실존적 인간은 순응 대신 어떤 저항과 노력으로 어떤 성취를 이룩해야 존재의 의미를 성취할 수 있다. 성취가 비록 사과향기 같은 영속성이 없는 것일지라도 그를 통해 얻을 수 있는 인간만의 기쁨은 무상의 굴레를 잠시라도 벗어날 수 있는 인간의 위대한 능력이다. 

이 시는 하늘을 향한 열망과 욕구불만, 노동의 기쁨과 육체적 피로, 잠의 충동과 죽음의 두려움 등 실존의 조건들이 교묘하게 결합되어 있다. 아담과 이브가 최초로 사과를 따먹은 후에 야곱의 사다리(Jacob's ladder)가 하늘을 향하고 있듯이, 사과를 따고 난 후에도 긴 사다리는 여전히 하늘을 향하고 있다. 사과를 수확한 지친 농부의 이야기에서 출발하여 인간의 열망을 명상하고, 인간의 성취를 결산하고, 겨울잠 이후의 불안한 미래에 직면하면서 우리는 우리 자신을 실존의 존재로 느끼지 않을 수 없다. 에덴에는 욕망 없는 충족, 노동 없는 풍요가 있을 수 있었다. 그렇다면, 이론적으로, 불만의 여지가 없고 피로의 원인이 없었다. 피로는 노동과 노력의 필연적 결과이다. 욕망과 야망은 노동을 유발하고, 사람은 그가 원한 풍작에 지쳐버린다. 그렇지만, 필요는 욕망 뒤의 동인이 될 수 있고, 우리는 사악한 순환을 갖는다. 이 시는 자연과 인간세계에 보편적인 쇠퇴와 무상의 법칙을 확인하는 동시에 실존적인 삶의 수용과 성취의 노력으로 인간이 달성할 수 있는 무상감의 완화, 삶의 기쁨과 보람을 확인한다. 비록 영원한 성취는 아니라 하더라도 결코 과소평가할 수 없는 인간 고유의 성취가 사과의 향기로 구현된다. 프로스트는 땅에서의 삶에 대한 애착을 강하게 보이는 시인이다.  

-신재실 씀-   

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youtu.be/h58mwg56k7g

youtu.be/nT87HiI_GZo

youtu.be/q-BXWQigAnI

http://www.kocw.net/home/cview.do?cid=5a43d471ed5c7167 

현대영미시

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“After Apple-Picking” (1914)

Louis Untermeyer describes this poem as “so vivid a memory of experience that the reader absorbs it physically” (244). One of Frost’s most anthologized poems, it first appeared in his second book, North of Boston. Whereas “Birches” was not printed until Mountain Interval, which followed North of Boston, the notion of climbing trees toward heaven is established here. “After Apple-Picking” appeared first, but it might be considered the later voice of “Birches.” The narrator is not the swinger of birches here but rather a mature speaker who is much like the weary poet who wanted to “get away from earth awhile / And then come back to it and begin over.”

The poem opens with the image of a ladder sticking through a tree, but it quickly moves to a barrel that was not filled and apples that were not picked. The essence of difficult rural life is illustrated through the descriptions of hard work and work that is never done. But there is also a mystical element. The narrator is strangely altered by the “scent of apples”—they seem to have the effect of poppies on his psyche. He cannot “rub the strangeness” from his sight. He has looked “through a pane of glass,” which seems to be a thin coating of ice formed overnight in the “drinking trough,” and, as if gazing into Alice’s looking glass, he has seen something that was “held against the world of hoary grass.” The world described here is as worn, tired, and old as the speaker feels, and a world brighter and more magical can be seen only as a mirage, momentarily held before it melts. But again the speaker is at fault: He has “let” the image “fall and break.”

The speaker seems to be having a dream within a dream: While the image falls away, he finds himself growing more and more full of sleep. As his body aches with the work left undone and his arches ache from time spent perched upon a ladder, he visualizes apples magnified; seemingly beautiful apples “appear and disappear” in his mind’s eye. The poem begins to lull the reader with the dreamy imagery and the distant, repetitive, “rumbling sound / Of load on load of apples coming in.” The apple farmer desired a “great harvest,” surely for his livelihood, but is exhausted by the magnitude of the work, which is as magnified as the apples in his view. Once again he embraces full responsibility, as his “desire” has brought something more than he can manage.

The poem seems straightforward: a description of a tired apple farmer growing heavy with sleep and dozing off to the sound in his memory of a hard day’s work. But as is typical in Frost, the reader never gets off quite so easily. Just when it seems as though the poem will draw to a dreamy close, the reader is thrust back to what has been left undone. Just as the barrel remained unfilled, the farmer is reminded of the “ten thousand fruit to touch” and of the apples that “struck the earth” and “[w]ent surely to the cider-apple heap / As of no worth.”

The trance is interrupted by the present-tense breaking in of “[o]ne can see what will trouble / This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is,” and the reader is forced to question what it is that will trouble the speaker’s sleep. The work left undone seems a likely cause, but so does the matter of the apples left to the cider heap. They were treated as if of no worth, simply for having “struck the earth.” But the apple farmer, too, has struck the earth. He is no longer climbing toward heaven, perched on a ladder, up above the earth at an untouchable height. He has, in his fatigue, struck the earth, and it is there that he is reminded of the work left undone and the possibility that he, while idle, is of no worth. Marie Borroff speculates that apples “constitute any series of things—or persons—with which one is responsibly concerned, each of which must be not merely handled but handled with love. This is the source of the kind of tiredness that is peculiarly human, the kind . . . that leads to a troubled, not a dreamless, sleep” (26–28).

The return to earth late in the poem is high- lighted by a consideration of nature. The speaker questions what sort of sleep he might have, some “human sleep,” or a “long sleep”—which one the woodchuck, if he were around, might be able to determine. This places nature in a more knowledgeable role than the narrator. Or as one critic put it, the narrator seems to have been “duped by a woodchuck.” The woodchuck, otherwise known as a groundhog, hibernates for all of winter, beginning in late fall. The reference to the absent woodchuck suggests further that the farmer’s work, which should have been completed by late fall, has grown all the more heavy on his mind.

Frost moves in and out of traditional forms with his rhymes here, weaving in and out of weariness and in and out of sleep. As in “Acquainted with the Night” and other poems, the structure of the poem mimics its message, and here the end rhymes lull the reader to succumb to the dreamy quality of the poem.

Frost’s use of a long sleep seems metaphorically suggestive of the long sleep of death or of the shift into the afterlife, as it differs from a human sleep. But Laurence Perrine argues that “whatever sleep it is,” it presents “a continuation of earthly activity” (89). Either way, this farmer is “done with apple-picking now” as the “Essence of winter sleep is on the night.” See FARMER , F ROST AS .

FURTHER READING

Baker, Christopher. “Frost’s ‘After Apple-Picking’ as Hypnagogic Vision,” Robert Frost Review (Fall 1994): 28–32.
Beacham, Walton. “Technique and the Sense of Play in the Poetry of Robert Frost.” In Frost: Centennial Essays II, edited by Jac Tharpe, 246–261. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1976.
Borroff, Marie. “Robert Frost: To Earthward.” In Frost: Centennial Essays II, edited by Jac Tharpe, 21–39. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1976.
Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Poetry. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960.
Conder, John J. “ ‘After Apple Picking’: Frost’s Troubled Sleep.” In Frost Centennial Essays, edited by Jac Tharpe, 171–181. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1974.
Doreski, William. “Meta-Meditation in Robert Frost’s ‘The Wood-Pile,’ ‘After Apple-Picking,’ and ‘Direc- tive’ ” A Review of International English Literature 23, no. 4 (October 1992): 35–49.
Kozilkowski, Stan. “Frost’s ‘After Apple-Picking’ and God’s Judgment,” Robert Frost Review (Fall 1997): 39–43.
Monteiro, George. Robert Frost and The New England Renaissance. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988.
Pack, Robert. Belief and Uncertainty in the Poetry of Robert Frost. Hanover, N.H.: Middlebury College Press, 2003.
Perrine, Laurence. “Robert Frost and the Idea of Immortality.” In Frost: Centennial Essays II, edited by Jac Tharpe, 87–89. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1976.
Sanders, David A. “Looking through the Glass: Frost’s ‘After Apple-Picking’ and Paul’s 1 Corinthians,” Robert Frost Review (Fall 1996): 12–22.
Untermeyer, Louis. The Road Not Taken: An Introduction to Robert Frost. New York: Holt, 1951.

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Summary

After a long day’s work, the speaker is tired of apple picking. He has felt drowsy and dreamy since the morning when he looked through a sheet of ice lifted from the surface of a water trough. Now he feels tired, feels sleep coming on, but wonders whether it is a normal, end-of-the-day sleep or something deeper.

Form

This is a rhyming poem that follows no preordained rhyme scheme. “After Apple-Picking” is basically iambic, and mostly in pentameter, but line-length variants abound. Line 1, for example, is long by any standard. Line 32 is very short: one foot. The poem’s shorter lines of di-, tri-, and tetrameter serve to syncopate and sharpen the steady, potentially droning rhythm of pentameter. They keep the reader on her toes, awake, while the speaker drifts off into oblivion.

Analysis

First, a comment on form. Throughout the poem, both rhyme and line-length are manipulated and varied with subtlety. The mystery of the rhymes—when will they come and how abruptly—keeps words and sounds active and hovering over several lines. We find the greatest separation between rhyming end-words at the poem’s conclusion. Sleep comes seven lines after its partner, heap, and in the interim, sleep has popped up three times in the middle of lines. Sleep is, in fact, all over the poem; the word appears six times. But the way it is delivered here, the last rhyme is masterful. Heap first rhymes internally with sleep, then again internally with sleep, and then again, and only pairs up with the end-word sleep in the poem’s last line. At this point, we’ve nearly forgotten heap. Sleep seems to rhyme with itself, with its repetition, like a sleepy mantra or a sleep-inducing counting of sheep. The poem arrives at final sleep not through a wham-bang rhyming couplet but more “sleepily.”

“There are many other things I have found myself saying about poetry, but the chiefest of these is that it is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority.” This is Robert Frost in 1946, in an essay for The Atlantic Monthly. “After Apple-Picking” is about picking apples, but with its ladders pointing “[t]oward heaven still,” with its great weariness, and with its rumination on the harvest, the coming of winter, and inhuman sleep, the reader feels certain that the poem harbors some “ulteriority.”

“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. Hints of winter are abundant: The scent of apples is “the essence of winter sleep”; the water in the trough froze into a “pane of glass”; the grass is “hoary” (i.e., frosty, or Frosty). Yet is the impending death destructive or creative? The harvest of apples can be read as a harvest of any human effort—study, laying bricks, writing poetry, etc.—and this poem looks at the end of the harvest.

The sequence and tenses of the poem are a bit confusing and lead one to wonder what is dreamed, what is real, and where the sleep begins. It’s understandable that the speaker should be tired at the end of a day’s apple picking. But the poem says that the speaker was well on his way to sleep before he dropped the sheet of ice, and this presumably occurred in the morning. The speaker has tried and failed to “rub the strangeness” from his sight. Is this a strangeness induced by exhaustion or indicative of the fact that he is dreaming already? Has he, in fact, been dreaming since he looked through the “pane of glass” and entered a through-the-looking-glass world of “magnified apples” and the “rumbling sound / Of load on load of apples coming in”? Or is the sheet of ice simply a dizzying lens whose effect endures? If, in fact, the speaker was well on his way to sleep in the morning, does this lend a greater, more ominous weight to the long sleep “coming on” at the poem’s end?

The overall tone of the poem might not support such a reading, however; nothing else about it is particularly ominous—and Frost can do ominous when he wants to. How we ultimately interpret the tone of the poem has much to do with how we interpret the harvest. Has it been a failure? Certainly there is a sense of incompleteness—”a barrel that I didn’t fill.” The speaker’s inner resources give out before the outer resources are entirely collected. On the other hand, the poet speaks only of “two or three apples” remaining, and these only “may” be left over. Do we detect satisfaction, then? The speaker has done all that was within his power; what’s left is the result of minor, inevitable human imperfection. Is this, then, a poem about the rare skill of knowing when to quit honorably? This interpretation seems reasonable.

Yet if the speaker maintains his honor, why will his sleep be troubled? There were “ten thousand thousand”—that is to say, countless—fruit to touch, and none could be fumbled or it was lost. Did the speaker fumble many? Did he leave more than he claims he did? Or are the troubled dreams a nightmare magnification and not a reflection of the real harvest?

Lines 28-29 are important: “I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired.” If there has been failure or too great a strain on the speaker, it is because the speaker has desired too great a harvest. He saw an impossible quantity of fruit as a possibility. Or he saw a merely incredible quantity of fruit as possibility and nearly achieved it (at the cost of physical and mental exhaustion).

When we read “After Apple-Picking” metaphorically, we may want to look at it as a poem about the effort of writing poetry. The cider-apple heap then makes a nice metaphor for saved and recycled bits of poetry, and the long sleep sounds like creative (permanent?) hibernation. This is one possible metaphoric substitution among many; it seems plausible enough (though nowise definitive or exclusive). However, our search for “ulteriority” may benefit from respecting, not replacing, the figure of the apples. Apple picking, in Western civilization, has its own built-in metaphorical and allegorical universe, and we should especially remember this when we read a poet whose work frequently revisits Eden and the Fall (c.f. “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same,” “It is Almost the Year Two Thousand,” “The Oven Bird”). When the poet speaks of “the great harvest I myself desired,” consider also what apples represent in Genesis: knowledge and some great, punishable claim to godliness—creation and understanding, perhaps. This sends us scurrying back to lines 1and 2, where the apple-picking ladder sticks through the tree “Toward heaven still.” What has this harvest been, then, with its infinite fruits too many for one person to touch? What happens when such apples strike the earth—are they really of no worth? And looked at in this new light, what does it mean to be “done with apple-picking now”?

All of these questions are enough to make one forswear metaphor and limit oneself to a strict diet of literalness. But that isn’t nearly as much fun.

https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/frost/section5/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CAfter%20Apple%2DPicking%E2%80%9D%20is%20about%20picking%20apples%2C%20but,with%20its%20rumination%20on%20the

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from "Frost and the Questions of Pastoral - ROBERT FAGGEN /

The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost"

“After Apple-icking” is the only lyric or poem that “intones,” as Frost said, in North of Boston. Stories from the Old and New Testaments merge in this pastoral lyric of penetration into matter and acceptance of limitations and of labor. Elegiac in tone, it seems quite overtly to address the virtues of work in the orchard. The speaker loves the sensuous attraction to the beauty of the apples “Stem end and blossom end,/ and every fleck of russet/ showing clear.” But all of the contemplation is connected to a dramatic mythology of seeking after completion, after perfection, a movement “toward heaven” through the tree, through the technology of the ladder, and the passionate preference of “picking.” Paradise, a word of Persian origin that means walled-in, was derived from the attempts to cultivate apples, hard work at the least. Labor and cultivation to the point of exhaustion are virtues extolled in Hesiod and also in Virgil and a fact of existence in Milton’s superfecund garden of Paradise Lost. Frost obviously plays with the mythology of the felix culpa or fortunate fall, Jacob’s ladder, as well as the Pauline (1 Corinthians 1: 12) aspiration of seeing God face to face instead of through a glass darkly. But all hopes of perfection suggested in the poem appear to be circumscribed by the imminence of failure, exhaustion, limitation. One of the crucial themes in this poem is the importance of what remains unpicked and unharvested, magnificent waste beyond our control. He concluded “Unharvested” with jovial prayer: 

May something go always unharvested! 
May much stay out of our stated plan, 
Apples or something forgotten and left, 
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft. 

The fact of waste and of superfecundity is Frost’s version of Thoreau’s ideal that in “wildness is the preservation of the world.” In “The Last Mowing,” “the meadow is finished with men. Then now is the chance for the flowers/ That can’t stand mowers and plowers.” The praise goes to “you, oh tumultuous flowers,/ To go to waste and go wild in,/ All shapes and colors of flowers,/ I needn’t call you by name.” Our attempts to control through cultivation or the nomenclature of botany are happily subverted by waste and wild. Here and in “After Apple-Picking,” the lure and sensuousness of the flowers and apples is cultivated and loved beyond their value in the marketplace and worth much more. But the pursuit of aesthetic perfection, even beyond the demands of survival and environment, comes to loss. Even in “The Last Mowing” as in “Spring Pools,” fragile, reflective beauty lasts only a moment in the general competition that will produce trees: “It must be now, though, in season/ Before the not mowing brings trees on,/ Before trees, seeing the opening,/ March into a shadowy claim.” All of nature competes, and our lack of participation in cultivation “brings trees on” (a treason to our desire for control and sympathy for the flowers). We cannot control an orchard and the revelation at the end of “Good-y and Keep Cold,” a reversal of human expectations, is that “something has to be left to God.” Though, in Frost, both the morality of God and his oversight appears doubtful.

Another “mythology” inherent in this poem is the Darwinian story of the “Tree of Life,” one in which there are apples that are saved, survive, and others that go to waste, good and bad apples completely naturalized in a process of selection in which we participate. The apples which the laborer cannot harvest will go to the “cider apple heap as of no worth” no matter “if bruised or spiked with stubble.” And one must wonder about the speaker himself who flouts seasons and the crucial principle in agriculture of “timeliness” (also part of Hesiod’s advice). Out of season, when winter sleep is coming on, the laborer persists on the ladder. The woodchuck who, as in the case of many creatures, lives off the seed of others and has the preservative instinct to hibernate, lives in contrast to “human sleep,” which may be little more than the contemplative fantasy of dreams.

“After Apple-icking” provides a suggestive commentary to many of the other eclogues in North of Boston. Competition of various kinds and conflict mark almost all of the poems, from “Mending Wall,” a new amoebaean dialogue, to the creation and destruction of barriers and moral hierarchies in “Home Burial.” The contrast between the desire to lead a life of contemplation in nature and the absolute hazards of doing so are an integral part of “The Self-Seeker,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” and “The Housekeeper.” “A Servant to Servants,” a dramatic monologue, presents a woman justifying her life against hard labor and insanity. The title echoes the Biblical curse on Ham, Noah’s son, for having seen his father naked, a curse later used to justify racism. This woman has seen the hollowness, the nakedness of her husband Len and the cruelty of a world that has ascribed her pain as madness worthy only of the asylum. She speaks to women on a botany outing, and her speech and life story become one of nature’s dark flowerings. 
In spite of the traditional association of flowers with beauty and innocence, flowers in Frost participate in a universal competitive machinery. In the early poem “In Hardwood Groves,” fallen leaves, like all individuals, “must go down past things coming up. / They must go down in the dark decayed.” Those “things” include flowers: 

They must be pierced by flowers and put 
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers. 
However it is in some other world 
I know that this is the way in ours.