A noiseless patient spider

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold.

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

I’ve been watching one in a corner…addition to a line of lifetime spiders…I had a Charlotte in my study in Idyllwild, she (or her progeny) kept a gorgeous web in a corner where two windows met, for years. Often Charlotte was a source of comfort, reassurance. And so today, sickabed with a hacking cold, trying to wrap up The Novel, Mr. Whitman hands me good cheer. Thank you, sir. (P.S. This source is also from my husband, should you note the editors.)

Whitman, Walt. The College Anthology of British and American Poetry edited by A. Kent Hieatt and William Park, Allyn and Bacon, Inc., Boston, 1972, page 448.