For "Design", the sonnet form has at least two advantages.
First, as in most strict Italian sonnets, the argument of the poem falls into two parts.
In the octave frost draws a pale still-life of spider, flower, and moth; then in the sestet he contemplates the meaning of it.
The sestet deals with a more general idea: the possible existence of a vindictive deity who causes the spider to catch the moth, and no doubt also causes other suffering.
Frost weaves his own little web.
The unwary reader is led into the poem by its opening story, and pretty soon is struggling with more than he expected.
Even the rime scheme, by the way, has something to do with the poem's meaning.
The word white ends the first line of the sestet.
The same sound is echoed in the rimes that follow.
All in all, half the lines in the poem end in an "ite".
It seems as if frost places great weight on the whiteness of his little scene, for the riming words both introduce the term white and keep reminding us of it.
A sonnet has a familiar design, and that is its second big advantage to this particular poem.
In a way, writing "Design" as a sonnet almost seems a subtle joke.
A sonnet, being a classical form, is an orderly world with certain laws in it.
There is ready-made irony in its containing a meditation on whether there is any order in the universe at large.
Obviously there's design in back of the poem, but is there any design to insect life, or human life? Whether or not the poet can answer this question, at least he discovers an order while writing the poem.
Actually, that is just what frost said a poet achieves: "a momentary stay against confusion.
" Although design clearly governs in this poem - the design isn't entirely predictable.
The poem starts out as an Italian sonnet, with just two riming sounds; then it keeps the "ite" rimes going.