Another necessary poem.
I don't know whether I've shared my love of this one, but I will this morning--it's going to be a long, long day, and last night's little companion in unfurlment on my porch made himself seen too late for that post, so think of this one as a post's worth of postscript, today an add-on to yesterday.
A Noiseless Patient Spider
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
posted by Dr. S at 7:13 AM
6 Comments:
Such a relief! As I was reading, I worried that you had written an inexplicably written an absolutely dreadful poem -- equal parts Wordsworth (stanza 1) and high school literary magazine (stanza 2). But it turned out to be Whitman instead -- which, really, I should have suspected all along.
And I know you'll forgive me that last post -- because I know that you know that our tastes in... well, everything are so dissimilar that it shouldn't be construed as a slight on your own inclinations; and because I know that you're a good enough close reader to recognize my implication that your poetry is better than Whitman's ever was. ;)
That's pretty hilarious, guy. It's true that this is yet another manifestation of our completely divergent tastes; I have been loving this poem (though not for its poetic craft, I will admit) since a long time ago.
O holy Jesus! I just saw the editing errors in my first comment! Can you fix those -- or are they fixed, forever, in virtual stone?
I hope the monks don't get wind of my having written "O holy Jesus." I also hope that they don't get wind.
and I am simply loving the photo of the spider and his own personal moon, Whitman or no.
I can trash the original comment and you can post it again, but that will lead to narrative incoherence! It's an eye-skip; it's fine, just fine. (Though the content of your comment is wrong. Baha.)
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