How we cite our quotes: (line)
Quote #4
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. (lines 25-26)
We know what the speaker means when he says that his neighbor is "all pine," and he is "apple orchard," but, at this moment, we can’t help but imagine (just for a split second), our speaker in the form of a talking, walking apple tree, and his neighbor in the form of a pine tree (like those giant tree-things in The Lord of the Rings). We also then can’t help but imagine how slightly carnivorous and threatening it would seem for our speaker, the apple tree, to eat the pinecones of his neighbor. What would be the worst-case scenario you can imagine if one of the neighbors owned cows, and if there were no wall between the properties? What damage can cows do?
Quote #5
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees. (lines 42-43)
Here we see nature blend with some other force? The treetops shade the neighbor, but there’s another darkness about him that the speaker can’t quite pin down. Are there any other moments in the poem where we see nature blended with other, more supernatural forces or ideas?