Robert Frost makes strong use of imagery in the description of a cow that avails herself of apples that have ripened and fallen to the ground. The speaker observes that she has eaten the apples so wantonly that "her face is flecked with pomace," meaning that apple pulp has ended up all over her head. He says that her drool has become a "cider syrup," indicating that her saliva has become thick and dark because of all the fruit she has eaten.
Frost also employs personification in the speaker's description of the cow. He ascribes human emotions to her, imagining that she "scorns a pasture" as she refuses to eat the grass that will enable her to produce milk; instead, she bursts through gates and over walls to get to the apples that she craves. Moreover, she is able to "think" that "wall-builders" are "fools."
Another literary device that Frost utilizes is alliteration with the repeated initial consonant "s" in lines six and eight and "t" in line seven.
The use of enjambment in lines 1, 4, and 5 emphasize the momentum of the cow as she rampages through the apple orchard. Once her run ends, the poem's final three lines are complete sentences with end rhymes.
The selection of powerful verbs border on hyperbole as the pasture "withers," the cow "scorns," "has to fly," and "bellows," and her udders "shrivel."
The cow in the poem is comically personified as being "inspire[d]" and having the capacity to think of a wall the way she thinks of an open gate. She has, evidently, burst through the wall of her enclosure, treating it like an open gate rather than a wall, and she's eaten the apples that have fallen into the grass. She appears to love the taste of apples and has eaten so many that her drool is compared, via metaphor, to a "cider syrup." Now that she has fallen for the taste of apples, instead of grass, she seems to "score" the pasture as she runs back and forth among the apple trees. To score something is to cut it with a sharp instrument (or to make a mark that seems as though it was cut with something sharp), and so this action is metaphorical as well. The speaker says that she runs among the trees, leaving the windfalls "bitten when she has to fly." The cow does not literally fly, but her movement from tree to tree is compared via metaphor to flight; this seems to characterize her movement as swift and graceful—an unusual way to think of a cow!
One literary device Frost uses in the poem is personification. Personification is attributing human characteristics to an animal, abstract concept, or inanimate object. Here, Frost has the cow thinking in a sophisticated way at the beginning of the poem, as a human being might. The cow apparently knocks her way through a wall and:
think[s] no more of wall-builders than fools
Only, a human, not a cow, would think about wall-builders and call them fools.
Frost also uses alliteration. Alliteration occurs when the words beginning with the same consonant are placed in close proximity to create a sense of rhythm. Frost uses the words "face" and "flecked," and, later, "sweeten," "spiked," and "stubble" alliteratively.
Strong imagery allows us to experience what the cow is experiencing with her five senses: We can see and feel the "cider syrup" that she drools from eating apples, and we can hear the sound of her "bellow."
Robert Frost's brief poem "The Cow in Apple Time" employs a simple ballad rhyme scheme of aa bb cc, and so forth. The only exception to this is the final rhyme, which uses the same rhyme three times instead of twice.
There is a sense of mystery to the poem, as the use of the word "something" to begin the poem indicates that the speaker is not sure why the cow is taking these actions. We also learn from that first line that the cow is only acting this way "of late," so this is new behavior. The repetition of "no more" in lines two and three and the parallel structure of those lines help to emphasize the cow's newfound lack of care for barriers. The cow seems to have an independent streak and no longer will be fenced in.
This poem is full of natural imagery, which Frost uses to describe the cow's behavior. For example,
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
She scores a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten. (4–8)
These lines also include a subtle Biblical allusion, as does the title, with its reference to "Apple Time." The cow has "tasted fruit," as Eve did in the Bible. The poem depicts the cow as experiencing a kind of freedom as a result of "having tasted fruit," as the cow "runs from tree to tree."
More imagery follows in the final lines, and the tone changes significantly with the last line of the poem: "Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry" (11). While the cow had previously enjoyed freedom, she now experiences loss. Fall, or apple time, is symbolically associated with decay and death, as summer fades gradually to winter. Here, the cow's fertility and productivity are drying up, signalling the end of her adventures.
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