"Design" by Robert Frost

Sarah Weinstein, March 22, 2007

 

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.