Patient
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.
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) included ‘A Noiseless Patient Spider’ in his groundbreaking collection of consciously American poetry, Leaves of Grass. When it was first published in 1855 Whitman even wrote a series of unsigned and extravagant reviews of his own book — an example of the whimsical self-reflexiveness that this poem demonstrates in miniature.
