"Design" and "God's Grandeur" Final Draft

As he delivered his second inaugural address in 1865, Abraham Lincoln stated humbly, “The Almighty has His own purposes”. He does not claim that God is on our side and will help make things go the way we need and expect them to go, but instead has His own reasons and purposes for certain events to occur regardless of whether it makes sense to us at the moment or not. Although we are faced with many baffling situations, most of which are out of our control and difficult for us to grasp, there is a higher purpose that will become evident to us in the long run. “Design” by Robert Frost and “God's Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins support Lincoln's statement in that both poems hint at the higher purposes of God. While Frost questions the possibly malevolent act of God in his poem, Hopkins praises God's unlimited sources of nature despite humans' lack of respect for it. Although depicted in different ways, both “Design” and “God's Grandeur” are tied together by the concepts of religion and environment as the authors critique the powerful nature of God and speculate His higher purposes.

Nature is used to represent the extent of God's power and magnificence in both poems. In “Design” the significance of an interaction between a spider, flower, and moth, one that is normally found insignificant, is emphasized by Frost. The poem opens with a descriptive scene and the consistent use of “white”. A “fat and white” spider is found on a “white heal-all” holding up a moth whose wings is like a “white piece of rigid satin cloth”. The word “white”, symbolizing innocence and purity in the Western culture, not only shows up constantly in the first few lines but continues to be a looming presence throughout the rest of the poem. Although the white moth believed it would be camouflaged by the white heal-all, it was still captured by the hidden white spider. With this Frost questions how the three creatures, all viewed in the positive light, could be involved in such brutal act or placed in such negative light. He questions the existence of God—how such “design of darkness” created by God could “govern in a thing so small” like the spider if He exists. What kind of evil lies within the rest of the world then? This shows that God has a plan, or design, for all things significant and insignificant. He has the power to control the course of nature, to appoint the lifestyles of creatures, and to even create illusions (like the “innocent” spider).

Similarly, Hopkins' “God's Grandeur” talks of the persistence and strength of nature created by God and consequently the powerful presence and influence of God Himself. The first stanza of the poem opens with a descriptive setting, which depicts the remarkable creation and form of nature. The natural world is “charged with the grandeur of God”; it is naturally charged with God's magnificence and therefore gives an impression of divinity. However, human take the gift of nature for granted: “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod”. Oblivious to where it came from and not even taking a moment to appreciate the gift, soon “all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil...the soil is bare now”. Although human have exploited the land for material gains and disregarded God's grandeur, the gift cannot be exhausted for “nature is never spent”. Everything renews, just as the sun would rise again the following morning if “the last lights off the black West went”. God's grandeur could overcome the human destruction of land for as soon as something is destroyed, the cycle of rebirth and destruction continues.

The concepts of light versus dark and surface versus depth speculate God's higher purposes and guide us in the direction to understanding it. In Frost's “Design”, purity is not permanent as shown by the “kindred spider” who eventually lost its innocence when it “steered the white moth thither in the night”. Why do such darkness and evil exist in the world? What is God's higher purpose for His creation of such act? In most cases, underneath all good lies some sort of evil. The white, and what seems to be innocent, spider is also God's “design of darkness”. Frost is telling us to look beyond the surface, or the superficial illusion, of things and to delve into the depths of reality and truth. On the surface, we see the act of a spider killing a moth as evil and malevolent. However, digging deep under the surface, we can see that this design is likely to have been created by God in order to allow the cycle of life to persist.

“God's Grandeur” also looks into God's will and purposes for the world. How come “nature is never spent” even though men have taken it for granted and “have trod, have trod, have trod”? Why does God decide to continue to give even as we take and take without appreciation? Hopkins is telling us that underneath the surface, the superficial devastation of land, there is a depth in which nature is able to revive itself for “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things”. This is all thanks to the “Holy Ghost”, God, who nourishes the world “with warm breast and with ah! bright wings” in order to keep alive the cycle of life and death. Just as “the black West” exists in the world (human exploitation), light exists as well when the sun rises “at the brown brink eastward” (God's majestic creation of nature).

Frost's “Design” and Hopkins' “God's Grandeur” both observe the capacity of the almighty God and His higher purposes through nature and the concepts of light versus dark and surface versus depth. God's higher purpose for the malevolent act of the spider in “Design” and His creation of a natural abundance in “God's Grandeur” provide for the continuous cycle of life. Many things in life do not make sense nor do they come with answers. However, these are things we should not worry ourselves with for the “Almighty has His own purposes”.