Design

By Robert Frost

There are two reasons to disbelieve the argument from design for a divine creator; Darwinian natural selection is a more parsimonious explanation, and this sonnet.  A mutant white spider has killed a mutant white moth on a mutant white flower. If that was by design … .

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 —
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed 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.

Robert Frost