In White
In White - meaning Summary
Design Revealed in Whiteness
The poem presents a small, uncanny scene—a white spider perched on a white flower holding a dead moth—and uses that mise-en-scène to ask whether such particulars are accidental or governed by a sinister order. Frost’s speaker registers the strangeness and moral unease of whiteness associated with death, repeatedly questioning cause and concluding on the disquieting possibility of deliberate design: "Design, design!" The tone is puzzled and wary rather than doctrinal, turning a local observation into a larger meditation on chance, intent, and the darker implications of natural arrangements.
Read Complete AnalysesA 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?
Feel free to be first to leave comment.