101 Poems, Number 52

Favorite Poems Throughout My Life

52: “Design,” 1922 (and in A Further Range, 1936), by Robert Frost (1874–1963)

A sonnet by our old friend Frost,

Who writes a bit about the cost

And what coincidence can bring

To moths and spiders—anything.

Was it design that merged that moth,

That spider, flower—such a cloth

Of pure implausibility?

You cannot find what you can’t see.

I can’t remember where I came

Across these lines? But, sure, the fame

Of Frost at first had made me pause—

And read—and think about mere Cause.

Link to poem.