Quote:
Originally posted by annie nance:
Hi Patricia,
Might as well go ahead and post Frost's poem here, eh?
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Thanks for posting the 1936 version, annie. You've made it easier for me to just go ahead and sorta interline the 1912 version.
Also: I, too, like Miss Emily's #258 . . . though, if she were posting it here for comment, I'd overlook her use of that breath/death rhyme but be tempted to tell here that, IMO, she said all that needed saying in her first and last quatrains.
All best--
Patricia
Quote:
In White (1912)
Design (1936)
A dented spider like a snow drop white
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth--
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight?
Assorted characters of death and blight
Portent in little, assorted death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth?--
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
The beady spider, the flower like a froth,
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And the moth carried like a paper kite.
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
What had that flower to do with being white,
The blue prunella every child's delight.
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
(Make no thesis of the miller's plight.)
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness and of night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
Design, design! Do I use the word aright?
If design govern in a thing so small.
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