The Cow In Apple Time

Robert Frost · 1916

Catalog grade guidance: 5–12 — Mountain Interval (1916), US public domain.

12 content lines · 98 words · Est. recitation about 54 sec (approx.)

Public-domain text for reading and recitation practice. Source: Project Gutenberg eBooks #3021 (A Boy's Will, 1913), #3026 (North of Boston, 1914) and #29345 (Mountain Interval, 1916).Estimated time uses ~120 words/minute plus short pauses—not a contest rule.

THE COW IN APPLE TIME

  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.