Response to Readers - After Apple-Picking

One of the students spoke about how the owner of the apple orchard was getting older and wished to quit the business of growing apples. The student claimed that the person who owned the orchard might be close to death, heaven, or not yet there.
In lines 28- 34 Robert Frost states that
"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 earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble. Went surely to the cider heap."

I think these lines mean that the orchard owner wishes to not pick any more fruit because he has picked enough in his life time. He explains that there would still be much more fruit to pick even if he was dead, whether it be rotten or ripe. He wishes to fade away quickly like the rotten fruit, but not to fall off the ladder while picking the fruit and die. He wants to fade away peacefully and gracefully.

He states that "One can see what will trouble this sleep of mine, Whateversleep it is.
Were he not gone. ...Long sleep as I descibe is coming on. Or just some human sleep."

These lines describe how he wishes to die quietly in his sleep.

"The Oven Bird" by Robert Frost

A- Robert Frost lived from 1874 to 1963. He was born in San Francisco and later lived in rural New England. He attended college at Dartmouth College. He married Elinor White. He was described by his friends as difficult and unpleasant. He suffered from depression. He suffered from several tragedies, including the death of his daughter, son and wife. He taught English and theater at Pinkerton Academy for six years. He wrote short stories and poems. He published several short stories, and novels, both fiction and non fiction. He also won several awards including the Pulitzer Prize.


B- "He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past."

C - The poem talks about the transition between time, seasons, change, and death. Here in this poem you see a subtle change between the season's scenery. And you also see a change when an older forest is destroyed to make way for a new highway in line 10. I have had a similar experience in my life through looking back at old photographs of my self and friends and realizing how much that I have really changed. I realize how quick life is and how quickly death can come. I enjoy camping out in the woods and appreciate the trees and nature around me. I enjoy Frost's relationship in his poem to the passage of time and the seasons of life.

Tragedy is represented in this poem by the relation of the changing seasons to the changing seasons of our life. As the seasons change quickly and the leaves die, so do our human lives and time on this earth.