Andrew's Wiki
Apple Gathering

“An Apple Gathering” (1863)

Content

• Like most of Rossetti, complains about love being unfulfilling in the end
• A girl gives too much of herself sexually to her lover and then finds herself betrayed
  • She “plucked pink blossoms” from her tree and “wore them all that evening in my hair,” ie, she was plucked
  • Now she can’t have any apples, ie, lasting loving relationship, while everyone else around her has baskets full of apples
• Harvest metaphor: you reap what you sow, and in this case, you’re gonna get nothing
• She’s alone as she will grow older, while other couples run inside to avoid the falling dew
• Why the nature metaphors? Makes it seem like natural law that she was jilted: conservative, not revolutionary.

Style

• ABAB rhyming verses for seven stanzas
• Each verse cut in half by question mark, semicolon, or colon that ends the second line
  • Very balanced tone
• Most lines proceed straight to end and use no enjambment, except for the apostrophe at Stanza 5, where she wails out to her lover, Ah! Willie, Willie; and the last stanza, which enjambs and thus sounds confused, sorrowful, as if she’s standing still

Quotes

• “While the dew / Fell fast I loitered still.”