The title shows that the event this poem discusses follows apple-picking. Apple-picking symbolizes life in that they both are methodical, and to the speaker, who is an old man, they are both work. Robert Frost published this poem in 1914, before the United States entered World War I. In following with the idea that there is less desperation in his poetry before the war, this poem is rather mellow and natural.

The speaker in "After Apple-Picking" is and old man who has worked picking apples for his whole life. He is tired, because his life has been one of manual labor. He identifies death with sleep, but not "just...human sleep," but rather, the winter hibernation of a woodchuck. The effect of this association is to construe death as a natural part of the life cycle.

Before the poem, Robert Frost sat around trying to think of...