A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER, by Walt Whitman

A Noiseless Patient Spider

By Walt Whitman

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.

A Noiseless Patient Spider” is a short poem by Walt Whitman, published in an 1891 edition of Leaves of Grass.It was originally part of his poem “Whispers of Heavenly Death”, written expressly for The Broadway, A London Magazine, issue 10 (October 1868), numbered as stanza “3”. It was retitled “A Noiseless Patient Spider” and reprinted as part of a larger cluster in Passage to India (1871) – wikipedia

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