Design

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.

--- 1922

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  Analysis: Deconstruction

The 14-line poem is called an Italian sonnet or Petrarchan sonnet.  This sonnet is composed of two stanzas, the first is composed of eight lines while six lines comprised the second. It follows the usual rhyme scheme "ABBA" since the first line rhymes with the fourth line and the second line rhymes with the third line. However, there  is a shift in the rhyming structure of the second stanza. The rhyme structure became "ACAACC.

In addition, the sonnet follows the Iambic pentameter which means that each line is ten syllables- five unstressed and five stressed syllables. (study.com)

The author introduced to us the three  characters of this poem namely, the spider, the flower, and the moth. The poem gradually develops into a series of contradictory pictures. The usually black spider, , the blue  heal-all plant(flower) and the moth are colored white which is very ironic. As Jarrell notes,  most details of the poem are intended to heighten the grim contrast between the potential innocence and the actual  horror of the scene.