Critic's Practice: A Noiseless Patient Spider

Practice analyzing a short poem, using the vocabulary of this unit. This exercise is for your own learning: nothing is submitted and nothing is graded.

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 (1868). Public domain.

Whitman published "A Noiseless Patient Spider" in 1868. The poem is ten lines long, divided into two stanzas of five lines each. The first stanza describes a spider casting silk threads into empty space. The second stanza addresses the poet's own soul and describes it in the same terms: isolated, surrounded by vastness, throwing out threads in search of connection. Read the poem aloud twice before you begin.

Your exercise

Write an analysis of the poem, about 250 to 500 words, that addresses three things:

  • Image: what pictures does Whitman use in each stanza?
  • Metaphor: what is compared to what, and what does the comparison reveal?
  • Structure: how do the two stanzas relate to each other?

Then explain how the poem's form transforms its subject matter (a spider spinning a web) into its content (the soul's search for connection).

Focus on specific details. What images does Whitman use in each stanza? How does the language of the second stanza echo and transform the language of the first? What is the effect of the repetition ("filament, filament, filament" in the first stanza; "ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking" in the second)? How does the two-part structure create meaning?

No outside research needed. Everything you need is in the poem and in the vocabulary of this unit. Quote the lines you discuss.

Your Notes

This is a thinking space — your response is not saved or submitted. Copy your work if you want to keep it.