Uploaded on September 18, 2011
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
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Third Edition, Volume Two
09.18.2023: I remember being surprised, back in college, that this poem is a sonnet. I guess I had had my filled head filled with the form being used merely for love.