What is the speaker's dream about and what literary device is "rumbling" in "After Apple-Picking"?
At least literally, what the speaker is dreaming about is apples and picking apples. In his dream, he keeps going over and over the things he has done during the day. He sees the stems of the apples, he feels the ladder under his foot, he hears the apples being dumped -- he's basically reliving his day.
Figuratively, you can say that the speaker is thinking back over his life, reliving his whole life as he is getting older and nearer to death.
I would say that the word "rumbling" in this case is an onomatopoeia. The word "rumbling" itself sort of sounds like the thing that it means.
What is "rumbling" in "After Apple-Picking"? What literary device does it represent?
You can argue that "rumbling" is here an example of onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia is a figure of speech in which the actual sound of a word seems to represent the sound it is describing — so, the rumble of...
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the apples cascading into the barrel is represented by the form of the word "rumbling" itself. If we say the word and think of the image Frost conjures, we can hear how the choice of that particular word makes the image more vivid and engages more of our senses.
The speaker says that whether an apple is bruised or not is actually immaterial — the issue is in whether or not the apple is allowed to touch the ground. If this happens, regardless of whether the apple is actually damaged by its contact with the ground, it must be condemned immediately to the "cider-apple heap" as if it is valueless. So the speaker feels exhausted by the need to juggle the apples in order to keep this from happening to them.
In this poem, the speaker is tired after a long day of picking and processing apples. Some people see this as a metaphor -- they say that he has lived a long life and is now tired and ready for death.
As to your specific questions. The apples are rumbling as they get dumped down a chute into the cellar. The word "rumbling" is an onomatopoeia because it sounds like the action it represents.
It is important to be careful with the apples so that they do not get bruised. If they do get bruised, they become worth less. They can't be sold or used for most stuff -- they have to get pressed for cider.