| 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. | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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 | 40 |
| Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, | |
Or just some human sleep. |
