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Design
by Robert Frost
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--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
"Design" was first published in 1922 and
then republished in A Further Range in 1936. Ten years before the
first publication, Frost had written an earlier version of this poem entitled
"In White". Notice
how different the poems are despite the similarity of the "event"
and the questions it provokes.
A good example of work with a Frost poem is Brett Roettinger's on Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Another
annotation of "Design" by Wes Chapman.
A hypertext version of "Design."
Criticism of "Design"
Useful
insights into "Design" can be found at The
Online Companion to the Norton Anthology of Poetry
Vocabulary:
dimpled;
heal-all;
snow drop spider;
kindred
wayside
appall
Form: Italian Sonnet.
Sound devices:
rhyme;
alliteration,
assonance,
consonance.
Repeated vowel sounds: "long i"; "short i"; "o" sounds
Repeated consonant sounds "th"; "t"; "d"; "l".
Frost on the importance of sound.
Images:
a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
a white piece of rigid satin cloth
the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings
Syntax. Note: the first eight lines (Octet) are one sentence. The second six (sestet) contains three questions ñ the last of which appears to be rhetorical.
Figures: simile, personification.
Meter: Note: Frost said that this poem had no "tune."
The first line is iambic pentameter and this is the basic rhythm of the poem, but Frost breaks the regularity of the meter especially in the beginning of the lines.
Tone:
What is the tone of the following words/lines?
Assorted characters
ready to begin the morning right
dead wings carried like a paper kite
Observations:
The "encounter" between the
speaker and what he finds seems to produce a "natural" reaction
that in turn leads to a poem that sounds less strained than the earlier "In
White." Notice the different words used to describe the spider ("dimpled"
not "dented"; "fat" not "beady") and the moth
"rigid" not "lifeless. Notice also how "ready to begin
the morning right" creates a kind of ambiguity not present in "In
White."
The poem's occasionally awkward rhythms
mirror the observer's having been disarmed by what he has seen. Is it part
of a design (the order of things); is the "whiteness" of everything
ironic? Or is (as in Melville" more than a hint of evil in the color?
or is the event too "small" to matter? It certainly was not too
small to haunt Frost.
In White (1912)
Robert Frost
A dented spider like a snow drop white
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin clothó
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight?ó
Portent in little, assorted death and blight
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth?ó
The beady spider, the flower like a froth,
And the moth carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The blue prunella every child's delight.
What brought the kindred spider to that height?
(Make we no thesis of the miller's plight.)
What but design of darkness and of night?
Design, design! Do I use the word aright?
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth
like a froth
like a paper kite
"There are only three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader. And the surest way to reach the heart is through the ear. The visual images thrown up by a poem are important, but it is more important still to choose and arrange words in a sequence so as virtually to control the intonations and pauses of the reader's voice. By the arrangement and choice of words on the part of the poet, the effects of humor, pathos, hysteria, anger, and in fact, all effects, can be indicated or obtained." Newspaper interview, quoted in Robert Newdick, "Robert Frost and the Sound of Sense," American Literature, IX (November, 1937), p.298. cited at http://www.frostfriends.org/FFL/Frost%20on%20writing%20-%20Barry/barryessay2.html#footnotes