Design

Design – Robert Frost

We all would have learned this poetry in our, English prose. The content of the poem leaves a deep-deep impression our heart.  Definitely, after understanding the poem our out look of life had changed. We now understood that not only The Upanishad (scared spiritual text of Hindus), or The Bagavad Gita (narrated by Krishna), or our Guru or our Granny say “Every thing happens according to His plan”, but even Robert Frost says that every movement in the nature/ universe is planned well. (It’s usual with us to not listen/follow to our tradition and Guru’s preaching; but when that desi coconut is rapped in foreign wrappers and imported to India we buy it with pride). I re-think about God’s-Design.

Design

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

Robert Frost in the poem “Design” has posed very simple yet deep questions about the nature and existence of God. In 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, found blooming along road sides in the summer. It was once supposed to have healing qualities, hence its name. Various characters, resembling death and unhappiness, are mixed up and they are ready to begin the morning. It refers 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. Was it an accident that this white spider came up to that height to sit on this white flower? And did the moth accidentally fly to that white flower in the night? Did heal-all flower which was meant to heal, acted as a disguise for the spider to capture the poor moth! It seems to be the darkness that has designed such arrangement for the moth, to notice the white flower in the darkness and land on it, white a white spider has disguised on it, knowing that there is going to be a moth there! What’s the role of this innocent flower there? Does it mean that a heal-all flower can’t act as a death-all land for a moth at certain times? Doesn’t it show the complexity of this design by God?

Frost’s answer to these questions is that design has brought these entities together.  “Design” means to create or draw up, to plan toward a specific purpose.  The idea of “design” in the poem suggests that some other entity or force has specifically created the white heal-all, the white spider, and the white moth and has brought them together for a particular purpose.

How much ever we reason out science for all cause and effects; even in day today activity there are thousands of things happening which science can’t explain. In every ones life there are some incidences that would make one to feel the presence of GOD, or his hand….

Even if we can’t practice it in every situation of life, at least we can practice to point at GOD, when things go wrong….and let down our burden for a while.