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

Design by Robert Frost:
A Malevolent Transformation

In this sonnet Robert Frost describes a simple scene from nature --- a spider on a flower (known as a heal-all) is holding a moth that it has captured as its prey. But Frost's description is filled with gothic imagery, including the fact that all three elements -- the spider, the flower and the moth -- are white, which here seems to embody, not purity and goodness, but deathly pallor.

Frost makes the scene sound cold-blooded (which it undoubtedly is), and horrific, and then uses it to suggest that the larger design of nature is similarly heartless or malevolent. The second and third question in the last part of the poem even suggest that nature has designs on living things, in which it sets up events to facilitate killing and death:

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.

The powerful rhyme, reinforcing the ironic comment in the last line, clinches it, and leaves the receptive reader horrified at what appears to be the sinister world of nature. Frost also switches color imagery at the end, and now the references to the color white are succeeded by a reference to "design of darkness to appall."

Although the speaker is clearly himself appalled by what he sees, this isn't exactly an angry poem, like "Spring," by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which expresses rage at the existence of death in nature. Instead, the speaker seems to examine his subject in a somewhat detached way, almost with a clinical eye. One might even say that the speaker's tone partially matches the cold-bloodedness he is describing in nature itself, which means he is himself the poet as spider who catches his subject and holds it up for clinical inspection, so we can be horrified along with him.

At the same time, the poem is a kind of philosophical joke since, when Frost refers to design, he is making an ironic reference to the famous argument from design, which says that the world looks and acts like it was designed, and therefore there has to be a God who designed it. Frost says yes, it does look designed, but it looks like the "design of darkness to appall?--"

But then Frost was known for this kind of thing. Here is what a Time magazine article, titled "Books: The Poet Laureate (Robert Frost)" said about him in 1962:

"Many of his poems are half wisdom and half whimsy, and Frost often seems to be sharing a sly, private joke with God. In fact, one couplet in In the Clearing offers God a bargain: Forgive, 0 Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me."

As noted, the heal-all referred to in the poem is a flower. But the poem isn't healing; it is opening (or reopening) a wound in the reader's perspective on life.

-- Ken Sanes

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Here is an earlier, weaker, version of "Design" by Robert Frost, titled "In White," from 1912:

In White

by Robert Frost

A dented spider like a snow drop white
On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth--
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight?--
Portent in little, assorted death and blight
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth?—
The beady spider, the flower like a froth,
And the moth carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The blue prunella every child’s delight.
What brought the kindred spider to that height?
(Make we no thesis of the miller’s plight.)
What but design of darkness and of night?
Design, design! Do I use the word aright?

Note, in particular, the way Frost points out in the last two lines that he is using the word "design" ironically:

What but design of darkness and of night?
Design, design! Do I use the word aright?

This becomes more subtly and ironically suggested in the final version of the poem: 

What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

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This page has various writings on "Design," including one by the literary scholar, George Montiero, who says that "Design" "is now considered one of the century’s most explosive poetic statements on the metaphysics of darkness." The poem expresses the fear, he says, that our existence isn't supported by any larger design or that the design is one "of unmitigated natural evil." The poem, he says, allows for both interpretations.

"Design" by Robert Frost: A Sample Commentary by S. Spachman
Robert Frost's "Design": A Critical Analysis
(There is a lot of information here, although the ethnic reference used as a metaphor in the first sentence would be better edited out.)  

A look at "Design" and "In White" by Robert Frost
A student explains Robert Frost's "Design"

Robert Frost at Wikipedia
An explanation of some Robert Frost poems, not including "Design"
The great-grandson, also named Robert Frost, speaks