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My Butterfly. An elegy.
Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,
And the daft sun-assaulter, he
That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead:
Save only me
(Nor is it sad to thee!)
Save only me
There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.
The gray grass is scarce dappled with the snow;
Its two banks have not shut upon the river;
But it is long ago-It seems forever-Since first I saw thee glance,
With all thy dazzling other ones,
In airy dalliance,
Precipitate in love,
Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a linp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.
When that was, the soft mist
Of my regret hung not on all the land,
And I was glad for thee,
And glad for me, I wist.
Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,
That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind,
With those great careless wings,
Nor yet did I.
And there were other things:
It seemed God let thee flutter from his gentle clasp:
Then fearful he had let thee win
Too far beyond him to be gathered in,
Snatched thee, o'er eager, with ungentle gasp.
Ah! I remember me
How once conspiracy was rife
Against my life-The languor of it and the dreaming fond;
Surging, the grasses dizzied me of thought,
The breeze three odors brought,
And a gem-flower waved in a wand!
Then when I was distraught
And could not speak,
Sidelong, full on my cheek,
What should that reckless zephyr fling
But the wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing!
I found that wing broken today!
For thou art dead, I said,
And the strang birds say.
I found it with the withered leaves
Under the eave
1. Frost, Robert. "My Butterfly- An Elegy." Miles to Go...: My Butterfly- An Elegy.
N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.
This is Robert Frost’s First published poem. It is about the death of a butterfly. It is a very
simple poem but complex in other ways. Simple in the way it talks about how the
butterfly floated around the field and was so peaceful until its cruel death, but complex in
what its true meaning was. The butterfly might just mean a simple butterfly or it could
have the resemblance of his father who dies when he was a young boy.
This source was very helpful because it gave me insight on how Robert Frost started out
since it was his first published poem. You can hear a different tone of voice in this poem
versus his other ones that he had written. This source connects to other sources in my
bibliography, the ones that have a biography on Robert Frost’s life, because they tell you
when his father died which was reflected in many of his poems that he wrote especially
this one.
This source was very helpful to me because it gave a lot of insight on how he started out.
It is going to help me give an argument that his life was directly reflected in his poetry
because of the death of his dad and the death of the butterfly in this poem. I will
paraphrase the death of the butterfly and how he watched it in the field and use it to argue
the connection.
2. "Miles to Go...: Biography." Miles to Go...: Biography. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar.
2013.
The point of this biography is to give you a quick summary on the life of Robert Frost
and a little insight of what his life was like when he wrote specific poems. It also tells
you what people thought of his poetry and how respected of a poet he was. It gives a brief
summary about his different careers he had throughout his life. Different times of his life
are easy to decipher because it has all the dates for important events.
This source was pretty helpful because it is a quick review of his life and it tells you what
was going on in his life when he wrote different poems, but it wasn’t that detailed so it
isn’t a good place to look for all the events that happened in Robert Frost’s life. The goal
of this source is to give you and idea on who Robert Frost was and what his poetry was
about. This source relates to all the poems I will be using in my research paper because it
gives me information on what he was doing when he wrote each specific poem that I am
using.
This was a very helpful source for my paper and for the argument I am trying to make. It
helps shape my argument by giving me more insight into the life of Robert Frost. At the
bottom of the page it gives a summary of what different jobs Frost had throughout his
life, which I can use to pick out certain poems and maybe relate it to the job he had at the
time.
Tamaryn 1
Robert Lee Frost (named after Southern General Robert E. Lee) was born on 26 March
1874 in San Francisco, California to Isabelle Moodie (1844-1900) teacher, and William
Prescott Frost Jr. (1850-1885), teacher and journalist.
With both parents as teachers, young Robert was early on exposed to the world of books
and reading, studying such works as those by William Shakespeare and poets Robert
Burns and William Wordsworth. He also formed a life-long love of nature , the great
outdoors and rural countryside. After enrolling in Lawrence High School he was soon
writing his own poems including “La Noche Triste” (1890) which was published in the
school’s paper. In 1892 he entered Dartmouth, the Ivy League College in Hanover, New
Hampshire, but soon became disenchanted with the atmosphere of campus life. He then
took on a series of jobs including teaching and working in a mill, all the while continuing
to write poetry.
Frost got his first break as a poet in 1894 when the New York magazine Independent
published “My Butterfly: An Elegy” for a stipend of $15. A year he married school
sweetheart Elinor Miriam White (1872-1938). They had six children together.
In 1897 he entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, though illness
caused him to leave in 1899 before finishing his degree. Despite that, it was one of many
institutions that would award him an honorary degree later on. In 1900 they moved to a
farm in Derry, New Hampshire. His son died of cholera and compounding this, was the
loss of his mother to cancer the same year. His daughter passed away soon after birth in
1907. But the farm was a peaceful and secluded setting and Frost enjoyed farming. This
period inspired such poems as “The Mending Wall” (written in England in 1913) and
“Hyla Brook” (1906).
In 1911 he sold the farm and the Frosts set sail for England. This was when Frost’s first
collection of poetry A Boy’s Will was published in England in. Frost’s work was wellreceived and fellow poets Edward Thomas and Ezra Pound became friends, supporters,
and helped promote his work. North of Boston (1914) followed. When World War I
started the Frosts were back in New Hampshire. A year later, Robert began teaching
English at Amherst College. Mountain Interval was published in 1916. His fourth
collection of poetry New Hampshire (1923) won him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in
1923. It includes “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”.
Another project Frost undertook was the founding of the Bread Loaf School of English at
Middlebury College in Ripton, Vermont. His next collection of poems West-running
Brook (1928) was published just one year before he was hit by the loss of his sister’s
death.
He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry a second time in 1931 for his Collected
Poems (1930), and also in 1937 for A Further Range (1936), and yet again in 1943 for his
collection A Witness Tree(1942). It was not long before the heavy blows of loss struck
again; his daughter Marjorie died in 1934, and in 1938 his wife Elinor died of a heart
attack. In 1940 his son Carol committed suicide.
Collected Poems(1939) was followed by A Masque of Reason (play, 1945), Steeple
Bush (1947), A Masque of Mercy (play, 1947), Complete Poems (1949), and In the
Clearing (1962).
Since 1915 Frost's position in American letters has been firmly rooted; in the years before
his death he came to be considered the unofficial poet laureate of the United States. On
his seventy-fifth birthday, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in his honor which said,
"His poems have helped to guide American thought and humor and wisdom, setting forth
to our minds a reliable representation of ourselves and of all men." In 1955, the State of
Vermont named a mountain after him in Ripton, the town of his legal residence; and at
the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961, Frost was given the
unprecedented honor of being asked to read a poem. Frost recited "The Gift Outright".
Robert Frost died on the 29th of January 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts. He lies buried in
the family plot behind the Old First Congregational Church near Shaftsbury, Vermont.
His gravestone reads ‘I Had A Lover’s Quarrel With The World’.
Just nine months after Frost’s death, Kennedy gave a speech at Amherst College, he said“The death of Robert Frost leaves a vacancy in the American spirit....His death
impoverishes us all; but he has bequeathed his Nation a body of imperishable verse from
which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding.”
CAREER
Poet. Held various jobs between college studies, including bobbin boy in a Massachusetts
mill, cobbler, editor of a country newspaper, schoolteacher, and farmer. Lived in
England, 1912-15. Tufts College, Medford, MA, Phi Beta Kappa poet, 1915 and 1940;
Amherst College, Amherst, MA, professor of English and poet-in-residence, 1916-20,
1923-25, and 1926-28; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Phi Beta Kappa poet, 1916
and 1941; Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, co-founder of the Bread-Loaf School
and Conference of English, 1920, annual lecturer, beginning 1920; University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, professor and poet-in-residence, 1921-23, fellow in letters, 192526; Columbia University, New York City, Phi Beta Kappa poet, 1932; Yale University,
New Haven, CT, associate fellow, beginning 1933; Harvard University, Charles Eliot
Norton Professor of Poetry, 1936, board overseer, 1938-39, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fellow, 1939-41, honorary fellow, 1942-43; associate of Adams House; fellow in
American civilization, 1941-42; Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, George Ticknor
Fellow in Humanities, 1943-49, visiting lecturer.
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3.
"MENDING WALL." Frost, Mending Wall. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2013.
This is a poem written by Robert Frost. It is about neighbors discussing the wall that is in
between them. They live in a small town or maybe an agricultural town. One of the
neighbors keeps saying, “Good fences make good neighbors”. The other neighbor doesn’t
quite understand why he keeps saying this or why the wall is there because he knows it
isn’t containing any animals, like most wall do in agricultural area. The poem is very
calm with not a lot of action going on but it is really cool to see how the two neighbors
act towards each other even though in the poem it doesn’t seem like they interact very
much.
This is a very helpful source because it gives you a great example of his work. This is a
poem that many people have loved because of how he flows his words together. This
source relates to my other source of his biography because in his biography it talks about
where he was when he wrote this poem. During this poem he was on his farm property
with his family where he wrote a lot of his poems and most had the setting of his farm or
a place like it.
This poem fits very well into my research, because with it I can argue that his location at
the time influenced the tone of voice used in his poem and the poem’s subject. It has
helped me reinforce my topic that I am trying to make in my paper. I will connect the
setting in this poem/source with the location he was currently living at when he wrote this
poem.
4. "Robert Frost." - Poets.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2013.
This source just gives you a short and quick summary on the life of Robert Frost. It
focuses more on his career life instead of his home life, which has good and bad parts to
it but it will be helpful. It talks about his time in college and how he got his start in
poetry. It has a lot of dates in it, but it doesn’t go into much detail about the specifics of
his life.
This source will be somewhat helpful, but not as useable as some as my other
biographical sources. It will be good to use as a secondary source to backup my other
biographies that I have found, but it doesn’t stand alone very well because it doesn’t have
any specific details about his life that are interesting enough to put into the research paper
to argue my topic.
This source doesn’t really affect the topic of my argument it will just serve as a source to
compare my other sources to, to make sure that they are all reliable and no dates are
mixed around or messed up. This source isn’t that useful, but I do need it to have a
backup source for all of the dates and locations he was living in during different times of
his life.
Robert Frost
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England
at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high
school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892,
and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree.
Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher,
cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly,"
was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent.
In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his
poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New
Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such
contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves.
While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who
helped to promote and publish his work.
By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length
collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the
nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new
book—including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947),
and In the Clearing (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes)
increased.
Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England,
and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly
aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely
regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal
themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually
spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his
work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.
In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost, the poet Daniel Hoffman describes
Frost's early work as "the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out
loud the sources of its own delight in the world," and comments on Frost's career as The
American Bard: "He became a national celebrity, our nearly official Poet Laureate, and a
great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark
Twain."
About Frost, President John F. Kennedy said, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of
imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."
Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in
Boston on January 29, 1963.
Tamaryn 1
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'. Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
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5. Pritchard, William H. Frost:A Literacy Life Reconsidered. N.p.: Oxford UP, 1984 Print
This is a book all about analysizing Robert Frost’s work, and how his work and life were
related and reflected. It argues how Frost grew over the years and how it was reflected n
his poetry, he went from a young man writing about more upbeat topics to an older man
writing about more serious topics, but no matter what age he always told a story in a very
detailed and interesting way.
This source will be useful because it is just a long version of the essay I need to write. It
makes very clear points about how his work and life are directly related to one another.
Out of all my sources that I have this one is the most helpful with my thesis that I will
need for this paper. The goal of this source was to clearly show how as Robert Frost grew
up and matured so did his poetry and other works. I think this source is very reliable
because of the points it makes and how it relates everything back to his work and home
life.
This book will fit into my research very well because of how similar it is to my essay that
I am writing. I can use some of the key points that are in this book about Robert Frost to
help structure the thesis of my paper, which connects his writings to his life outside of
poetry. I don’t think it changed my topic but I think it helped me gain a better perspective
on how to write my paper on Robert Frost’s life, poetry, and how they are connected to
each other.
6. "Academic Help." : A Critical Analysis of Robert Frost's "Design" N.p., n.d. Web. 17
Mar. 2013.
This source is a critical review on Robert Frost’s poem “Design”. It analysis each line
and give you an idea of what the poem is about. The critic who wrote this really likes
Frost’s work especially the poem design. He believes that it is the best poem he has
written and an insight into Robert’s life. It talks about many ways the poem “Design” has
been analyized
The writer of this review was pretty bias towards Robert Frost and his poem. He never
gave any negative views that some people may have against this poem. He just assumed
that everyone felt the same way that he did and that this poem was perfect. I think this
sources main goal was to persuade everyone into feeling the same way he did about the
poem. This relates to my other source that is the actual poem “Design”.
This source doesn’t fit into my research all that well besides the fact that it is a review
and analysis on my other source which is the actual poem “Design” written by Robert
Frost. I can use this by taking the analysis and comparing it to what Frost was surround
with at the time. I will look at some biographies on Robert Frost and see if I can make
any connections from the analysis to the biographies.
A Critical Analysis of Robert Frost's "Design"
Editor's Note: Lionel Trilling dubbed Robert Frost as " a terrifying poet" for Frost's poetry tends to
portray man as a helpless pygmy in front of the huge might and complexity of the world that surrounds him.
Man can neither look far nor deep enough to understand and make sense of the incomprehensible
complexity and design that pervades & permeates the world. Lionel's may not be an entirely fair or an
appropriate description of Frost's poetry but the fact remains that Frost is far more realistic and blunt in
stating the truth than most other poets. Frost knows that expecting evil at dark places alone is being naive.
One may be caught unawares even at the most unexpected places. Think not that black is the lone color
representing evil as white too has the power to disturb & startle you unexpectedly.
"Design" is a poem of finding evil in innocence, a song of experience, though the voice is hardly that of
Blake’s child-like singer. At first we hear the cheerfully observant walker on back-country roads: ‘I found a
dimpled . . .’ The iambic lilt adds a tone of pleasant surprise: ‘I found a dimpled darling’—‘Little Miss
Muffet sat on a tuffet!’ But in ‘spider’ the voice betrays itself, and in ‘fat’ and ‘white’ the dimpled creature
appears less charming. On a small scale the first line, like the whole poem, builds up a joke in tone, rhythm,
and image that grows into a ‘joke’ of another sort.
In the poem, the joking discovery develops gradually through a series of contradictory pictures. ‘A white
heal-all’ suggests purity and safety, though the color echoes the white of the swollen spider. A satin-white
moth has its charm, too, a party-going creature poised like Wordsworth’s butterfly on its flower; but ‘rigid’
is too frozen, too easily reminiscent of rigor mortis or the stiff shining satin of a coffin. In the aside of the
next three lines, the speaker gives away his joke, but he does it jokingly, again partly by tricks of rhythm.
First there is the very correct iambic on line four in exactly ten syllables, every other one of which must be
stressed, a little as in doggerel.:
Assorted characters of death and blight . . .
The plain truth of the statement takes on a cheerful sing-song quality, an effect increased in the next line by
reversing the stress and omitting the short in ‘Mixed ready.’ The tone now becomes quite jaunty, but ‘right’
hovers on a pun for ‘rite,’ as the poet mixes a brew worthy of the Weird Sisters, Shakespeare’s most evil
images of evil. The adding of unstressed syllables speeds up and lightens the next line to soften the ugliness
of what is being said:
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth . . .
And with
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
More oblique joking is resumed in images of springtime freshness (‘snow drop,’ ‘flower-like,’ we hear).
But the spider is there, and the fragility of ‘froth’ hardly conceals the link with venom. A surface of elegant
gaiety is kept up, however, through symmetry of sound, as o’s and I’s, alliterated syllables, and apparent
compounds are balanced in each half of the verse. Again we are brought up short with ‘dead wings,’ and if
kites are fun, a ‘kite’ is also a bird of prey, and ‘a paper kite’ is another image of death-like rigidity.
The sextet brings the expected change in tone, now no longer easily observing and half-singing though in
mockery, but self-questioning and increasingly serious. The first question (‘What had the flower to do . . .’)
sounds like ordinary annoyance at a face that doesn’t fit in, though ‘white’ out a place begins to seem like
‘black.’ The next question (‘What brought the kindred spider . . .’), in a voice of lost innocence, brings a
new note and a harsher irony with ‘kindred’ (as if the sweet flower and the spider had conspired to arrive at
exactly that height and place). ‘Steered’ is more sinister, and with the last question ironic puzzlement turns
into vision:
What but design of darkness to appall?—
Alliteration picks out salient impressions to give older theological and Emersonian arguments a reverse
twist—‘Design, yes—but for evil.’ But the natural theologian pauses—he is only asking, not asserting—
Tamaryn 1
and takes a backward step:
If design govern in a thing so small.
It may after all be absurd to see so much in a flower, a moth, and a spider. But the ‘if’ stands out oddly
because of the reversal of stress and because of the pause for the loss of a syllable,
If design || govern . . .
There is a glimmer of a further joke: ‘If design govern in anything at all . . .’—the subjunctive and a second
reversal of stress alert us to the doubt. The soothingly humorous hesitation points to something many
readers may find less agreeable than design of darkness, to no order whatever.
Few poems by Frost are more perfectly and surely composed, few where the figure in the mind and in the
ear are better matched. Consider, for example, the daring use of the same end-rhymes, half the total number
on a single sound. Though the repetitions in the poem can be matched in other poets, the surprise comes
with the rhyme in line 9, which is picked up again in 'height' and 'night.' This persistent echo might be
merely curious if it didn't come in so many words that in idea and image play with the disturbing discovery
of the poem: words and things that ought to mean 'good' turn out to be 'evil.'
The equations of rhyme and of i-sounds within lines (ten of them!) link the ingredients of this witches'
broth in insidious confusions (white=blight=right(rite)=height=night). Also notice the surprising and apt
use of the many double and triple stresses on successive syllables, from 'White heal-all' through 'snow-drop
spider' to ‘white moth thither.' The weighting of rhythmic emphasis in these words, many of them evoking
seemingly slight and charming images, directs attention to possible ugliness in ‘things so small.’
"Design," a perfectly executed sonnet, is Frost's greatest poem. The title refers to the idea, as William
James writes in Pragmatism (1907), that "God's existence has from time immemorial been held to be
proved by certain natural facts.... Such mutual fitting of things diverse in origin argued design, it was held;
and the designer was always treated as a man-loving deity." The idea of a benign deity is mentioned, for
example, in Matthew 10: 29, which teaches that God oversees every aspect of the world, even unto the fate
of the most common bird: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the
ground without your Father" knowing it.
The idea of a perfectly created world also appears in Genesis 1: 31, where "God saw everything that he had
made, and, behold, it was very good." In "The Tyger" (1794) Blake admired the power of a God who could
create, in his divine order, the most fierce and gentle hearts, and rhetorically asked: 'Did he smile his work
to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
To poets, the spider could represent different purposes in God's design. Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient
Spider" is benign; but the Black Widow in Robert Lowell's "Mr. Edwards and the Spider" is a symbol of
the damned soul. Frost, like Hardy in "An August Midnight," uses the spider to emphasize the evil aspect
of God's design and offers, as Randall Jarrell notes, an "Argument from Design with a vengeance.... If a
diabolical machine, then a diabolical mechanic ... in this little Albino catastrophe."
In "Design" the normally black spider and blue heal-all (the ironic name of the medicinal flower) are both
wickedly white -- a play on Elinor's maiden name. The spider, fattened by a previous victim, holds a dead
white moth like a rigid piece of satin cloth (or a rigid waxy corpse) in a coffin. These three characters of
death and blight, like the elements of a witches' broth, are ready to begin the morning right -- or evil rite.
Frost asks what evil force made the blue flower white and what malign power brought the spider into
deadly conjunction with the moth. His dark answer suggests that this awful albino death-scene refutes
Genesis, St. Matthew and the comforting belief recounted by Blake and William James: "What but design
of darkness to appall? -- / If design govern in a thing so small." In the horrible but inevitable logic of
"Design" Frost replaces God's design with the artist's.
"Design," arguably one of the best sonnets ever written by an American poet. It is a frightening poem, one
that confronts the dire possibility that the universe is not only godless but that God is evil. In keeping with
the Imagest tendencies in modern poetry, Frost centers the poem on a picture . . . .
The white spider — already a freak of nature - has landed on a white flower with a white moth in its grip.
None of these three elements is normally white, which gives each of them an abstract eeriness. The fact that
these elements are "mixed ready to begin the morning right, / Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --" is
deeply ironic: indeed, the language parodies the language of breakfast cereal ads. What we get here is an
image that combines death and blight. There is nothing life-enhancing about anything in this piece of
nature.
Frost simply offers three haunting and unanswerable questions:
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.
The poem is in many ways the key to Frost's universe, a poem so perfect in its execution that one cannot
imagine a word placed otherwise. Frost's tone is deftly controlled throughout, with the poet's serious point
balanced nicely by the parodic language of the first stanza. Ever aware of the linguistic roots of words,
Frost is inwardly winking when he uses the word "rigid" to modify "satin cloth." Likewise, at the end, he is
certainly aware (as a former Latin teacher) that the word "appall" means "to make white" in its root sense.
And Frost is delighting in the way he can wring an unexpected turn of meaning from the Classical
argument from design.
Frost uses the rigidity of the sonnet form to present a formal philosophical problem. We are introduced, in
the course of the octave, to 'Assorted characters of death and blight', three things the narrator happened to
come across once: 'a dimpled spider, fat and white', a white flower, and, held up by the flower, 'a moth /
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth.' The three are introduced separately, assembled in synthesis to
demonstrate the incongruity of their relationship, and then re-described in the last two lines of the octave
for emphasis:
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
Up to this point, the scientist-poet has only permitted himself the emotional shock of the elements
presented for his examination and he accepts them as specimens at random. Frost tries to solve the
problems they pose and, as he does so, the tension suddenly breaks, along with the rhyme-scheme. In a
series of negatives and outraged rhetorical questions, he demands reasons for the strange combinations of
existence. What is the 'design' behind all this, he asks. All he can summon up, by way of an answer, is the
following:
What but design of darkness to appal? -If design govern in a thing so small.
Far from solving the problem, this conclusion only exacerbates it. For the alternatives are either that the
'design' reflects some vast malevolent joke, or that the concept of 'design' is absurdly irrelevant -- in which
case, the process of questioning in the sonnet is itself called into question. This, in effect, is the irresolution
of 'For Once, Then, Something' returned with a vengeance, since on the borders of it now hovers a sense of
fear. It is bad enough to believe that we are condemned to abide amidst uncertainties; it is even worse to
suspect that those uncertainties harbor danger, that the universe is not only unknowable but treacherous.
However, like so much in Frost's poetry, this remains only a suspicion. Fear lurks beneath the surface of a
poem like this, certainly: but, in other poems, Frost's playfulness, his willingness to entertain all kinds of
doubts and possibilities leads him in the contrary direction -- not to transcendence of facts, perhaps, but to a
wondering, joyful apprehension of their potential, to the sense that nature might after all be whispering
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secret, sympathetic messages to us.
It is not surprising that a poet should feel menaced by a comet or the ocean; these represent nature at its
most massive, and might well be expected to instill a sense of human fragility. But, in the best known of the
dark prototypical poems, Frost confronts nature on a much more local scale-indeed, the poem hinges on the
diminutiveness of the natural emblem—and still reads in it one of his most chilling lessons. "Design" is a
crucial, and multiply ironic, enactment of and commentary on the whole Emersonian outlook which lies
behind Frost's method of making nature lyrics. It continually invokes, and yet simultaneously questions, the
entire American literary tradition which authorizes the process of emblem reading. For a basic
understanding of the poem one still cannot do better than to read Randall ]arrell's account; I want merely to
add a few remarks about the sonnet as an emblem poem.
Structurally, "Design" is as clear a model of the American emblem poem as we could ask for, its movement
"from sight to insight" reflected in the conventional division of the sonnet into octave and sestet and
underlined by the typographical separation of the two parts. The encounter with the natural emblem in the
octave is essentially Thoreauvian: the poet, evidently, is out wandering alone in nature, and the time is
early morning. Many of Frost's darkest insights into the natural order occur at the emblematic moment
when night descends; but the impact of the macabre scene in "Design" is made more acute by the bright
expectations of what Thoreau calls "the most memorable season of the day, . . . the awakening hour", when
the poet encounters these "Assorted characters of death and blight / Mixed ready to begin the rooming
right."
The natural "characters" represent a startling apparent violation of natural order: a wildflower which would
normally be blue, a spider which would likely be dark, and a moth which might be almost any color are all
the same color—and, with Melvillian irony, that color is the white of purity or innocence. As Jarrell notes,
much of the descriptive detail in these lines is intended to heighten the grim contrast between the potential
innocence—from the "dimpled" spider to the "dead wings carried like a paper kite"—and the actual horror
of the scene.
Such inverted innocence, in such a small, even delicate scene, serves only to render the message that Frost
reads in this tableau all the more dismaying: the evident "design of darkness to appall." Even that brief
formulation is steeped in irony.
As "The Onset" suggests, shaped whiteness—the whiteness of design—may ordinarily be heartening to
Frost; it is the indefinite and formless whiteness of snow (as in "Desert Places"), of Melvillian chaos, which
usually dismays. Here, however, the shaped whiteness of a small emblem turns out to be not the whiteness
of normal design, but of "design of darkness"; its effect is to "appall" the observer, to make him turn pale or
white with dread of such dark whiteness.
Were "Design" to end with its thirteenth line, it would be a powerful and ironic but relatively
straightforward emblem poem. The final verse, however, threatens to call all in doubt—not just the evident
lesson of natural darkness, but the entire epistemological basis of reading the book of nature. That line—"If
design govern in a thing so small"—questions the result and method of the rest of the poem, and the
presuppositions of emblem reading, in the way Frost regularly questions his inherited assumptions. Neither
in the context of this poem nor in the context of Frost's whole canon, however, does the last line deny the
omnipresence of design.
This sonnet might almost have been written as a characteristic reaction by Frost to what he would consider
the excesses of Emersonian optimism, as for instance this serene assertion: "I am not impressed by solitary
marks of designing wisdom; I am thrilled with delight by the choral harmony of the whole. Design! It is all
design. It is all beauty". Frost is too Thoreauvian in his familiarity with natural fact, including its dismaying
side, to accept so sweeping a concept of design.
In the poem's first thirteen lines, he simply extends the logic of the traditional argument from design; as
Jarrell puts it, "If a watch, then a watch-maker; if a diabolical machine, then a diabolical mechanic". But the
last line—"If design govern in a thing so small"—seems to threaten to undermine not just the previous lines
of this sonnet, but Frost's entire "synecdochist" poetics—as well as a long and central tradition of American
nature writing. Frost invokes just that tradition in the eleventh and twelfth lines of "Design": "What brought
the kindred spider to that height, / Then steered the white moth thither in the night?" Frost's couplet, in
other words, simultaneously rings in and questions the nineteenth-century American poetic tradition of
providential design.
The original version of the last line, as reported by Thompson, reads: "Design, design! Do I use the word
aright?" That question still lingers in the "If" of the revised final line. If we look at the poem as a whole,
clearly design of some sort does "govern in a thing so small"—in the masterfully crafted sonnet itself, in its
description in the octave which both heightens and ironizes the drama, in its sestet which simultaneously
invokes and questions the tradition of the argument from design. The real question which the last line raises
is whose design this is—whether that of God or nature or "darkness," on the one hand, or that of the
observer, on the other. As, William James puts it in Pragmatism: "the abstract word 'design' is a blank
cartridge.
It carries no consequences, does no execution. What design, and what designer? are the only serious
questions." The implication for Frost, I think, is that the "design of darkness" or of nature or of God is the
design made by the perceiver, by the poet. Only the human eye can make or find any design in the natural
world. Though the narrator's role in the drama is intentionally and ironically minimized, it remains crucial
in the two opening words of the poem: "I found". Like all revelation, all design "has been ours."
The last line of "Design" suggests, for a temperament as willful and feisty as Frost's, the occasional sense
of the potential hostility and violence of the physical world, such as we see in "A Loose Mountain," "Once
by the Pacific," and the first thirteen lines of "Design, " is ultimately less appalling than the threat of
emptiness or indifference.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertfrost/768
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7. ""A Soldier" by Robert Frost." - Term Papers. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2013.
This is a poem written by Robert Frost. It is about neighbors discussing the wall that is in
between them. They live in a small town or maybe an agricultural town. One of the
neighbors keeps saying, “Good fences make good neighbors”. The other neighbor doesn’t
quite understand why he keeps saying this or why the wall is there because he knows it
isn’t containing any animals, like most wall do in agricultural area. The poem is very
calm with not a lot of action going on but it is really cool to see how the two neighbors
act towards each other even though in the poem it doesn’t seem like they interact very
much.
This is a very helpful source because it gives you a great example of his work. This is a
poem that many people have loved because of how he flows his words together. This
source relates to my other source of his biography because in his biography it talks about
where he was when he wrote this poem. During this poem he was on his farm property
with his family where he wrote a lot of his poems and most had the setting of his farm or
a place like it.
This poem fits very well into my research, because with it I can argue that his location at
the time influenced the tone of voice used in his poem and the poem’s subject. It has
helped me reinforce my topic that I am trying to make in my paper. I will connect the
setting in this poem/source with the location he was currently living at when he wrote this
poem.
8. "New Hampshire - A Poem by Robert Frost - American Poems." New Hampshire - A
Poem by Robert Frost - American Poems. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2013.
This is Robert Frost’s First published poem. It is about the death of a butterfly. It is a very
simple poem but complex in other ways. Simple in the way it talks about how the
butterfly floated around the field and was so peaceful until its cruel death, but complex in
what its true meaning was. The butterfly might just mean a simple butterfly or it could
have the resemblance of his father who dies when he was a young boy.
This source was very helpful because it gave me insight on how Robert Frost started out
since it was his first published poem. You can hear a different tone of voice in this poem
versus his other ones that he had written. This source connects to other sources in my
bibliography, the ones that have a biography on Robert Frost’s life, because they tell you
when his father died which was reflected in many of his poems that he wrote especially
this one.
This source was very helpful to me because it gave a lot of insight on how he started out.
It is going to help me give an argument that his life was directly reflected in his poetry
because of the death of his dad and the death of the butterfly in this poem.
9. Frost, Robert, and John Hollander. Frost. New York: Knopf, 1997. Print.
This is a book all about analysizing Robert Frost’s work, and how his work and life were
related and reflected. It argues how Frost grew over the years and how it was reflected n
his poetry, he went from a young man writing about more upbeat topics to an older man
writing about more serious topics, but no matter what age he always told a story in a very
detailed and interesting way.
This source will be useful because it is just a long version of the essay I need to write. It
makes very clear points about how his work and life are directly related to one another.
Out of all my sources that I have this one is the most helpful with my thesis that I will
need for this paper. The goal of this source was to clearly show how as Robert Frost grew
up and matured so did his poetry and other works. I think this source is very reliable
because of the points it makes and how it relates everything back to his work and home
life.
This book will fit into my research very well because of how similar it is to my essay that
I am writing. I can use some of the key points that are in this book about Robert Frost to
help structure the thesis of my paper, which connects his writings to his life outside of
poetry. I don’t think it changed my topic but I think it helped me gain a better perspective
on how to write my paper on Robert Frost’s life, poetry, and how they are connected to
each other.
6. Kendall, Tim, and Robert Frost. The Art of Robert Frost. New Haven, CT: Yale UP,
2012. Print.
This source is a critical review on Robert Frost’s poem “Design”. It analysis each line
and give you an idea of what the poem is about. The critic who wrote this really likes
Frost’s work especially the poem design. He believes that it is the best poem he has
written and an insight into Robert’s life. It talks about many ways the poem “Design” has
been analyized
The writer of this review was pretty bias towards Robert Frost and his poem. He never
gave any negative views that some people may have against this poem. He just assumed
that everyone felt the same way that he did and that this poem was perfect. I think this
sources main goal was to persuade everyone into feeling the same way he did about the
poem. This relates to my other source that is the actual poem “Design”.
This source doesn’t fit into my research all that well besides the fact that it is a review
and analysis on my other source which is the actual poem “Design” written by Robert
Frost. I can use this by taking the analysis and comparing it to what Frost was surround
with at the time. I will look at some biographies on Robert Frost and see if I can make
any connections from the analysis to the biographies.