"Questions for Our God": Comparison of "Design" by Robert Frost and "The Lamb" by William Blake
...¡±, the child asks the lamb if it knows who made it¡¯s soft and wooly clothing, tender voice, and life. The child asks, ¡°Little Lamb, who made thee? / Dost thou know who made thee?¡± (1-2) two times and Blake¡¯s intention of doing this is to show that the speaker is a child. Another intention for Blake to do this is so that the readers would look at things freshly, wondering at natural objects and finding in them a child¡¯s simple amazement of beauty. Similarly, in the first line of Frost¡¯s ¡°Design¡± the speaker says, ¡°I found a dimpled spider, fat and white¡±. If the subject, spider is eliminated from this line, the dimpled and white subject would usually remind the readers of a baby. However, what the child of ¡°The Lamb¡± does not do while the speaker of ¡°Design¡± does is that the speaker makes a lot of contradictions. The grotesque insects compared to baby and rich satin cloth mentioned in the first stanza already make the readers suspicious. The speaker¡¯s use of contradiction is endless in the sense that the heal- all (the flower) used to be blue, innocent baby- like spider and satin like moth transcribe into the real spider¡¯s and moth¡¯s abhorrent character that the witches make them into a soup. The earlier movement of the speaker of ¡°Design¡± is because the speaker is an adult, and can think more in-depth and contradict himself to lead on the readers to figure out his conclusion of his analysis of the scene. Yet, in ¡°The Lamb¡±, the child is shallower since he first, directly describes the Lamb, then question it as if he really doesn¡¯t know the answer. The difference is shown in the second stanza. The speaker of ¡°Design¡± contradicts and gives hints to the readers to question in the first stanza that the question he asks in the second stanza is answerable. The speaker asks, ¡°What but design of darkness to appall?- / If design govern in a thing so small.¡± (13-14) The speaker is suggesting there¡¯s nothing in this world that can be more horrifying than darkness, spiders and moths, so small that they are not noticed, hidden by darkness, that these small creature are also very horrifying. God¡¯s indifferent deportment towards small things allows the Universe to be also half filled with horror. The case in ¡°The Lamb¡± is different. The speaker, the child is asking timeless questions that all human beings have, ab...