A Noiseless Patient Spider, by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman in 1887

In A Noiseless Patient Spider, a poem published in 1867 as part of Walt Whitman's masterpiece Leaves of Grass, the poet discovers that a spider has something to teach him.

In the first stanza, the poet observes the spider. The spider is isolated, standing on a promontory, a little piece of rock jutting out into the air, the space surrounding it "vacant" and "vast." Poor spider, so tiny and alone in the big universe!

It sends filaments, silky threads that it uses to build its web, out into the vast, vacant space around it. The spider is all alone, and there seems to be nothing around it, yet it keeps on trying to make contact with something outside of itself. This isn't easy; the space is so vast. Yet the spider keeps on trying. It is "patient." It is "noiseless" - it doesn't protest or complain about the difficulty of its task. It doesn't get tired. It just keeps on sending "filament, filament, filament" out into the world.


We might surmise that the spider has an instinctive faith that there is something out there in the vast empty space, that if it keeps on sending out its filaments, eventually one will find a place to land, and the spider can then begin to build its web.

In the second stanza, the poet makes an explicit analogy between the spider and himself. Like the spider, the poet is surrounded by "measureless oceans of space." He, too, wants to make contact with something outside himself.

He, or rather his "soul," throws out a "gossamer thread" (another way of saying a spider filament). The analogy here, I think, is to a sense of yearning. The soul wants to make contact with something in the universe. Just as the spider wants its silken threads to connect with something solid, so the poet's soul wants to connect with "the spheres." The poet wants to create a bridge between himself and something that matters in the vast, vacant universe. There are many ways to interpret "the spheres," the object of the poet's longing. They might be other people, or love, or truth, or beauty, or meaning, or God.

Perhaps the poems that the poet writes are his filaments, and he writes the poems in order to try to make contact with whatever it is that he seeks.

The "spheres" are hard to find. If you think about how vast space is, and how relatively tiny the planets are, you can see it would take a long time for someone casting about at random in space to land on a planet. Here, the poet seeks to learn a lesson from the spider. The spider is "patient." The spider is "noiseless." The spider keeps on trying, without complaint. So too must the poet keep on trying, keep on writing his poems, until someday his thread will catch.

Here's the full text of the poem:

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, surrounded, 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.

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