Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Finally, the sestet ends with a question about whether any moral lessons can be learned from this little scene in nature: "[w]hat but design of darkness to appall/if design govern in a thing so small." In other words, the speaker is asking whether he should even try to draw any conclusions from the spider's destruction of the beautiful moth.
The final lines of the poem not only call into question the beneficence of nature; they also call into question the ability of human beings to draw lessons from nature. (Bagby, pp. 73-74). Ultimately, the poem raises questions about the Darwinian metaphor more than it does about the Darwinian theory. (Hass, p. 62). Frost is trying to suggest that there is a limit to what human beings can learn from nature and to their ability to draw their own moral lessons from it.
In the final analysis, "Design" is a poem that embraces skepticism. It presents an ambivalent natural scene and emphasizes the irreducible ambivalence of the natural struggle in which some creatures devour and destroy others. Rather than resolve that ambivalence and reach some tidy...
Frost and the Book of Nature. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993.
Burt, Stephen & Mikics, David. The Art of the Sonnet. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2010.
Cramer, Jeffrey S. Robert Frost Among His Poems: A Literary Companion to the Poet's Own Biographical Contexts and Associations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1996.
Frost, Robert. "Design," Rpt. In the Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Allison Booth, et al. Shorter 9th ed. W.W. Norton & Company. New York, 2005. 810.
Hass, Robert Bernard. Going by Contraries: Robert Frost's Conflict with Science. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002.
Holder, Rodney D. God, the Multiverse, and Everything: Modern Cosmology and the Argument from Design. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.
Works Cited
Bagby, George F. Frost and the Book of Nature. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993.
Burt, Stephen & Mikics, David. The Art of the Sonnet. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2010.
Cramer, Jeffrey S. Robert Frost Among His Poems: A Literary Companion to the Poet's Own Biographical Contexts and Associations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1996.
Frost, Robert. "Design," Rpt. In the Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Allison Booth, et al. Shorter 9th ed. W.W. Norton & Company. New York, 2005. 810.
The narrator is on his "death-bed" and recognizes that his youth was good and he lived a good life. The "glowing of such fire" seems like it would relate to Hell, but really it refers to the fire and passion of youth, that burns out as people grow older, and is extinguished entirely by the time a person has lived a long life and is ready to die. He
Greeenblatt also points out that to truly grasp the meaning of the poem and the transience alluded to therein, readers must consider the social code for homosexual love. The Church did not tolerate sodomy and it would make sense that men would be attracted to other men considering how women were often treated as lower-class citizens. Through this "seesaw game of acknowledgment and denial" (253), Shakespeare "stages his sexual
Shakespeare's Sonnets 18, 73, 97 Poets have often looked to nature for inspiration and as a vehicle for self-expression. Throughout his lifetime, William Shakespeare is known to have written 154 sonnets, which cover various topics such as love, mortality, and the passage of time. Of these sonnets, sonnet numbers 18, 73, and 97 incorporate seasonal symbols that allow Shakespeare to express his love, the passage of time and its effect on
Shakespeare Sonnets In both Sonnet 71 and in Sonnet 73, the narrator contemplates old age and death. Both poems use rich and dark imagery to convey the theme of human mortality, although Sonnet 73 is more filled with metaphor than 71. However, both poems are composed according to the strict rules of the poetic form: in iambic pentameter with fourteen lines organized into three quatrains and a final couplet. Iambic pentameter
The rhyme scheme of this sonnet follows Shakespeare's usual structure, wherein the quatrains all have an independent alternating rhyme (ABAB CDCD EFEF), and the final two lines form an heroic couplet (GG). This adds to the feeling of receiving discrete steps of an argument, and enhances the divisions of the versification. There is also a noticeable prevalence of "l's and "s's in the poem, particularly in the first and third
Jewel Stairs' Grievance: Li PO / Ezra Pound We can assume from the poet's heritage that the speaker is an Asian woman. However, there are further contextual cues that aid in the understanding of "The Jewel Stairs' Grievance." For one, the opening line refers to "jeweled steps," which indicates a place of some wealth or importance. There is sexual innuendo throughout the poem: the dew, the gauze stockings, and the