'Design of darkness'

"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.''

 

-- "Design,'' by Robert Frost

 

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