Design

A Further Range (1936)

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,On a white heal-all, holding up a mothLike a white piece of rigid satin cloth—Assorted characters of death and blightMixed ready to begin the morning right,Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth—A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

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.