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-698a39e577e4" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Frost, 2002)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (Frost, 2002). If we use Frost`s logic, then this "morning right" becomes an evil rite.
In Design, Frost likens God to an artist. He may be seen as the designer of life, the patterns, though in this case are contradicting, are too perfect to be denied. If man was a part of this life that Frost describes, then he would need to follow that same pattern. Man would have both good and bad experiences, but these can be deemed as normal part of life. In the last lines of the poem Frost offers three haunting questions 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):
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.
What designed nature so that the typically blue wild flower is now white? How can a spider reach so high, then bring down death to an innocent moth? What beauty is there in darkness? Man has struggled with all sorts of contradictions, but then, as Frost says, these are all part of nature, and man`s struggles are just part of the design.
At first reading, Robert Lowell`s For the Union Dead may be regarded as a dedication to Colonel Shaw, "A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders braces the tingling Statehouse, shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry" ADDIN Mendeley Citation{fb15c429-edbd-459b-a698-0f2cca8deada} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/boldtype/0600/lowell/poem.html", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "18" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Lowell", "given" : "Robert" } ], "container-title" : "Voice of the Poet: Robert Lowell", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2000" ] ] }, "title" : "For the Union Dead", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=fb15c429-edbd-459b-a698-0f2cca8deada" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Lowell, 2000)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (Lowell, 2000). Further reading, however, shows that it is about an individual`s experience of loss - of vanished buildings, collapsing traditions, shattered childhood and conflicted societies. It regards man`s evolution where Lowell "[his] hands tingled to burst the bubbles drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish…[and] sigh still for the downward and vegetating kingdom of the fish and reptile" ADDIN Mendeley Citation{fb15c429-edbd-459b-a698-0f2cca8deada} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/boldtype/0600/lowell/poem.html", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "18" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Lowell", "given" : "Robert" } ], "container-title" : "Voice of the Poet: Robert Lowell", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2000" ] ] }, "title" : "For the Union Dead", "type" : "webpage" ...