North of Boston - After Apple-picking - Robert Frost
Channel: New Media Arts Inc
Date: 2023-11-03

ROBERT FROST

From a hired hand who finally comes home, to a man who will never 

walk the New England woods again for his beloved native orchids, 

Robert Frost paints his metaphors into the lives of country people 

in a rich and formidable land.

These 17 pieces are from Robert Frost’s modernist masterpiece, 

“North of Boston”, first published in 1914. 

10 After Apple-Picking
Voice: Judith Adele
Directed by Judith Adele and Bob Shurley
Image and SFX editing: Judith Adele
Sound and video editing: Bob Shurley

A production of Avatar Repertory Theater: 

www.avatarrepertorytheater.org

Avatar Repertory Theater is a project of New Media Arts Inc, 

www.newmediaarts.org, a nonprofit organization tax exempt under IRC 

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This project was made possible by a generous donation from Selby 
Evans.

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©2016 New Media Arts Inc

IMAGE & SFX SOURCES: 
www.publicdomainpictures.net, “Snow-covered Winter Orchard. 

"Ladder”, Pixabay. www.northernag.net - “Apples”. “Woodchuck”, 

Pearson Scott Foresman, c.1900, Wikimedia Foundation. 

TEXT (Project Gutenberg edition)
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.