The implied personification of the spider, moth, and flower becomes obvious in line four, as Frost calls the three "characters of death and blight." A bit of humor is injected to this story, ironically, as all three creatures are cast in their own tragedy. The tragedy continues, as they begin the mourning rite (a pun based off of "morning right"), another example of replacing positive connotations with negative connotations (5). "Mixed," from line five, aids the imagery of "the ingredients of a witches' broth" in line six, putting the negative connotations out in the open instead of hiding them behind ambiguous diction. Frost changes back to ambiguities, however, in lines seven and eight: "A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite." Snow-drops are associated with the innocence of childhood, and they're supposed to be light and effervescent, but instead they just seem cold and icy when describing the spider. Flowers are beautiful and angelic, but combined with "froth," in this context, the alluring flower turns into the foam dripping out of a rabies-infected animal's mouth. A "paper kite" is a children's toy, but preceded by the "dead wings" of the moth, the innocence of the kite is negated. The image of a child playing with a kite has changed into an image of a child playing with a huge dead bug. Now that Frost has seen all of the details and nuances of this scene, he begins to philosophize about why it all is the way it is.
In the second stanza, Frost wonders if this scene in nature were predetermined or just random. He starts with the flower: "What had that flower to do with being white, the wayside blue and innocent heal-all?" (9-10). The irony in this is that the flower is not innocent, as it is what drew the moth to the spider; furthermore, "wayside" brings up the word wayward, which also implies that the flower is not innocent (10).