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User Rating:
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7.3
/10
(36 votes)
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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.
Robert Frost
| Submitted Date |
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Friday, January 03, 2003 |
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Read poems about / on: flower, snow, death, night
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Comments about this poem (Design
by
Robert Frost
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Yacov Mitchenko (8/22/2011 2:33:00 AM)
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Why this poem has an average rating of 7.9 is beyond me. The phrasing is fresh, taut, highly economical, and the associations are surprising ('like a paper kite'/Like the ingredients of a witches' broth', in particular) . The poem has good line breaks, beautiful alliteration, and fluidity of expression. It seems very easy to write, which is a sure hallmark of a master. The poem glitters with diamond-like rhymes. And it happens to be deceptively deep. The reader is carried along by a smooth, hypnotising rhythm, which can lull one into superficial, careless reading.
The narrator is uncertain whether what's witnessed is by design - by design of a cruel or malevolent force (as suggested by the 'witches' broth- simile) . But he seems inclined to think it is. There is irony and dark playfulness to boot: 'Mixed ready to begin the morning right'/'...like a paper kite.' There is no caring Creator here: there is only the cruel cycle of eating and being eaten. What I appreciate is Frost's honesty and integrity: he doesn't try to present a rosy picture of God by suggesting THERE IS A HIGHER PURPOSE TO THIS SHIT; WE MUST HAVE FAITH. GOD IS GOOD, even if HE/SHE appears cruel or indifferent. The narrator restricts himself to what is observed, speculates in a playful way, without being led away by pleasant (stale/unoriginal) theories and/or beliefs. He basically admits he isn't sure what really is in the background of our existence, and doesn't try to cover up the uncertainty with rosy affirmations and cliches, after the manner of a coward.
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MARK L. BERRYANN (11/22/2009 10:41:00 AM)
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Life from invisible to right in our faces seems as if all by design. Not preordained but, finding our place instinctively and then feeding off of each other.10
Mark
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Andrew Hoellering (5/28/2009 9:18:00 AM)
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Frost’s brilliance emerges in the difference between this final version and its preliminary, In White. A comparison of the two poems is illuminating. In Design he changes the first line to ‘I found a dimpled spider, fat and white.’
‘Lifeless’ becomes ‘vivid’(L.3) and the fourth line ‘Assorted characters of death and blight.’ ‘Snow-drop’ replaces ‘beady’ in Line 7, and the 8th line now reads ‘And dead wings carried like a paper kite.’
Each substitution is more realistic, convincing and ominous, foreshadowing Design’s conclusion:
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appal? -
If design govern in a thing so small.
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