Does Design Indicate a Designer?

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Immediately after reading the first few lines, Robert Frost’s “Design” depicts three images: a spider, a moth and a heal-all (a type of flower I presume?). Furthermore, the color “white” seems to be associated to each of the three images early on in the poem. Later in the poem however, a more unnoticed, subtle but morbid theme of death and darkness is revealed as to have accompanied the images all along.

I believe Frost’s sonnet alludes to the overall theme of ignorance towards “design”. The title is Design, yet Frost only mentions “design” in the volta of the sonnet. Frost seems to say to the audience, design may only bring death “if design [only applies] in a thing so small” (line 14). Frost seems to praise “design” and tries to convince the reader to agree with his viewpoint. Frost also compares the white moth to satin cloth, dead wings to paper kites, as if to say that natural living beings are also designed. Perhaps Frost is asking for more appreciation towards the things that are “designed” in addition to designs being able to be applied at a larger scale than that of minute things like spiders and moths, satin cloth, or paper kites. There seems to be a large image of a “designer” in the sonnet; the “snow-dropped spider”, “a flower like a froth”, “dead wings and “paper kite”, seem to indicate that the spider, moth, and heal-all are all attributed as being light-weight “ingredients” that can be picked up at any time and tossed into a “witches’ broth” which seems to symbolize death as it connotes an uneasy image.

The organization of the paragraph is quite interesting in this poem. First, Frost presents the images as “white”; the color “white” is used quite often to symbolize virtue, cleanliness, purity, etc. Later in the poem, the whiteness of the images is in jeopardy of being stained as the “assorted characters of death and blight [are] Mixed ready to begin the morning right” (line 4-5). However, why does this have to be done to” begin the morning right”? This is still unknown to me. Even further in the poem, the second stanza to be exact, seems to be composed of questions and seems to accuse the reader of utilizing “design” to taint the once “innocent heal-all”, the “kindred spider”, and the “white moth”. Overall, Frost’s sonnet seems to advocate for the importance of design.