Poetry, Design by Rober Frost
Uploaded by alijoker on Jan 08, 2007
[size=18:fc97ccf195]“Design” by Robert Frost[/size:fc97ccf195]
[i:fc97ccf195]Written and uploaded by [url=http://alijoker.blogspot.com]Ali Noorani[/url][/i:fc97ccf195].
Robert Frost in the poem “Design” has posed very simple yet deep questions about the nature and existence of God. But before going through those questions, we will have to review what the poem says at the first look.
[list:fc97ccf195]I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth,
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-[/list:u:fc97ccf195]
At the first few lines of the poem, we see a white scene designed, consisted of a fat dented spider, which is white, sitting on a white heal-all flower, holding a white moth like a rigid cloth. A heal-all flower is a wild flower, usually blue or violet but occasionally white, found blooming along road sides in the summer. It was once supposed to have healing qualities, hence its name.
[list:fc97ccf195]Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right
Like the ingredients of a witch’s broth-
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.[/list:u:fc97ccf195]
Various characters, resembling death and unhappiness, are mixed up in this scene and they are ready to begin the morning. Such scene is obviously referring to the nature with its paradoxical assortment as well as its unity. This assorted unity is compared to a witch’s broth; a soup with different ingredients: a white spider, like a snow drop, a flower white as animal’s saliva, and dead wings of a moth, like a kite made of white paper. First stanza as you have noticed finishes here, the content of which was description of a scene, a picture and nothing more. The poem zooming of different parts of this picture makes us think of it as a frame of a dynamic situation, but the fact is that the picture is dead. Flower, spider and the dead are all static.
[list:fc97ccf195]What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?[/list:u:fc97ccf195]
Now in the second stanza, Frost begins to express what he meant by capturing that moment. The significance of this picture is that they all are white. This is called camouflage in science, an outward semblance that mispresents the true nature of something. This heal-all flower which was meant to heal, acted as a disguise for the spider to capture the poor moth.
[list:fc97ccf195]What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?[/list:u:fc97ccf195]
Was it an accident that this...