By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A Noiseless Patient Spider’ is a little gem of a poem among Walt Whitman’s oeuvre. In this post we’d like to share the poem, and offer a few words of analysis. What does Whitman mean by using the ‘noiseless patient spider’ when depicting his own soul?
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.