The speaker finds that the large harvest for which he had wished has become excessive: He has “had too much/ Of apple picking.” He recalls the details of the work with pleasure, but he is half afraid of the sleep he feels coming on. On the edge of sleep, he remembers not only the ripe apples successfully picked but also those that fell and were considered damaged and had to be sent to the cider mill.
He knows that his sleep will be troubled by the failures more than by the successes. He is not sure about the nature of the sleep he is about to drop into – whether it will be ordinary steep, more like a hibernation, or more like death. All the sensory images are pleasant, but they have become distorted, as if the pleasant dream could become a nightmare. Thus we see that even the bumper crop is at the cost of considerable physical and mental exhaustion.
