Robert Frost’s “The Cow in Apple Time” is a compact fable about a cow that breaks through a wall, gorges on windfall apples, and pays for it. Once she has tasted the fruit, ordinary pasture seems worthless; she runs from tree to tree, chomping and drooling cider, then bellows on a hilltop like a creature gone wild. The speaker watches with a wry, almost amused eye—there is something comic in her smeared face and her contempt for wall-builders. But the ending turns sobering: her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry. The appetite that set her free also makes her useless to the farm. The mood is playful on the surface and rueful underneath, a dry little parable about indulgence, freedom, and how a single taste can change a life for the worse.
The Cow in Apple Time — Summary
Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools. Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit, She scorns a pasture withering to the root. She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten. She leaves them bitten when she has to fly. She bellows on a knoll against the sky. Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.