Trying to think of a poem for way back when...

evil-monkey

Hi all,

Hoping that you all might be able to help me identify a poem. I thinks its Hopkins, but can't seem to find it. I remember doing it way back when during the ould Leaving Cert, but I've been rifling through my Hopkins collections and cannot find it. It may not have been him.

It was about chance/providence. A moth/butterfly got caught/eaten by a spider I think...think there was a line that was something to the effect: "What brought the moth there on that fateful night?" That sort of thing. Was sure it was Hopkins...but can't find it in either of his collected works (Oxford & Penguin).

Any ideas?

tbh

Design by Robert Frost, I think.


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.

evil-monkey

Boom! Much appreciated. That had been annoying me all day.