Labor, Desire, and the Hypnagogic Dream

This poem tracks the moment consciousness fractures under exhaustion. The speaker has finished apple-picking and is falling asleep, but Frost doesn't give us a clean transition—instead, waking and dreaming states bleed together. The magnified apples that 'appear and disappear' aren't memories; they're hallucinations happening in real time as the speaker loses the ability to distinguish between what he's seeing and what he's imagining.

Frost's technical move is to use present tense throughout the dream sequence, collapsing the boundary between past labor and present drowsiness. When the speaker says 'I keep hearing from the cellar bin / The rumbling sound / Of load on load of apples coming in,' he's not remembering—the sound is happening now, in his mind. This is the hypnagogic state, the neurological space between waking and sleep where sensations intensify and repeat. Frost captures what it actually feels like to be too tired to think clearly.

The poem's central paradox is that the speaker 'desired' the harvest but is now 'overtired' of it. He wanted the work, chose it, but his own desire has trapped him in a loop he can't escape even in sleep. The apples that 'struck the earth' and went 'surely to the cider-apple heap / As of no worth' mirror the speaker's fear that his own labor might be worthless—that rest won't repair him, that sleep itself might be just another form of numbness.

What 'Trouble' Means: The Unresolved Ending

Frost's final move is brilliant because it refuses closure. 'One can see what will trouble / This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.' The speaker knows the magnified apples will haunt his dreams—but notice he doesn't say what form that trouble will take. He can't predict his own unconscious.

The woodchuck comparison deepens this uncertainty. A woodchuck hibernates; a human sleeps. They're different states entirely, yet the speaker can't distinguish which one is coming for him. [CONTEXT: Frost wrote this in 1914, near the end of a period when he was doing physical farm labor in New Hampshire—the poem draws from lived exhaustion.] By invoking the absent woodchuck, Frost suggests that true rest might be impossible for humans, that we're trapped in a kind of half-sleep where labor's pressure stays with us even when we stop moving. The poem ends not with relief but with a question the speaker can't answer: 'Or just some human sleep?'

Robert Frost

After Apple-picking

MY long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree

ladder pointing upward

The ladder 'sticking through' toward heaven isn't metaphorical—it's literal description doing double work. Frost establishes both the physical scene and the speaker's exhaustion so complete that even reaching upward feels like aspiration he can't sustain.

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

ice lens detail

The speaker skimmed ice from a trough and used it as a magnifying glass. This is the poem's optical shift—he's been seeing apples enlarged all day, and now that distortion is bleeding into his drowsy vision. The ice melting parallels his consciousness dissolving.

ice lens detail

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,

magnified apples appear disappear

The hypnagogic state (between waking and sleep) is where the poem's real action happens. Frost uses present tense here—the speaker isn't remembering picking; he's hallucinating the apples in the moment of falling asleep. This is what 'trouble' means later.

magnified apples appear disappear

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

ladder-round pressure

Frost tracks physical sensation as evidence of labor. The 'pressure' stays in the body even at rest—the speaker can't separate himself from the work. This isn't poetic; it's anatomical proof of exhaustion.

ladder-round pressure

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,

ten thousand thousand

One hundred million apples. Frost uses biblical/epic scale language (reminiscent of Psalm 90) to describe labor that's repetitive and ultimately futile. The doubling of 'thousand' makes the number feel overwhelming rather than precise.

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.

woodchuck comparison

The speaker can't be sure what kind of sleep is coming—human sleep or animal hibernation. Frost leaves this unresolved. The woodchuck (gone for winter) becomes a measuring stick for a rest the speaker suspects he'll never fully understand or achieve.

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.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation