Man and Nature in Poems

Man and Nature in Poems
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Man and Nature in Poems
Robert Frost`s poem tackles one of the oldest debates: whether man has real freedom or is he merely an actor in a play? Is there a designer to all life? Is man simply playing a role written for him by a divine being?
Design is considered as Frost`s greatest poem because of the sing-song quality of its rhymes. Frost investigates the dualities found in life - of life and death, day and night, light and darkness, of good and evil. This is already evident in the first lines of his poem: "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" ADDIN Mendeley Citation{d4450f96-7334-49fb-b35b-698a39e577e4} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/teaching/intro-poetry/design.html", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "18" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Frost", "given" : "Robert" } ], "container-title" : "The Complete Poems of Robert Frost", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2002" ] ] }, "title" : "Design", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=d4450f96-7334-49fb-b35b-698a39e577e4" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Frost, 2002)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (Frost, 2002). The white heal-all suggests of purity and safety, a sort of safety net. Yet, it is equated with the fat, white and dimpled spider, a creature less charming. This sort of comparison can be found all throughout the poem.
More than a perfectly executed sonnet, Design is also a poem about God, and how He becomes perceptible in nature. How then can two objects which are white, the color of purity, can represent both life and death? Normally, a spider is black, but Frost decided that a spider can be white, but then this one is fattened by a previous victim. It`s victim is once again colored white, but it is likened to a rigid piece of cloth - like a waxy corpse wrapped by linens (which is an old custom for burying the dead. None of the spider, flower and moth are normally white, but Frost decides in his poem that they can be and that makes these three elements a freak of nature. They lend the poem an eerie feel. These three elements, all abstractions are "mixed ready to begin the morning right" ADDIN Mendeley Citation{d4450f96-7334-49fb-b35b-698a39e577e4} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/teaching/intro-poetry/design.html", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "18" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Frost", "given" : "Robert" } ], "container-title" : "The Complete Poems of Robert Frost", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2002" ] ] }, "title" : "Design", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=d4450f96-7334-49fb-b35b-...