The Full Text of “A Noiseless Patient Spider”
1A noiseless patient spider,
2I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
3Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
4It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
5Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
6And you O my soul where you stand,
7Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
8Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
9Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
10Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
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“A Noiseless Patient Spider” Introduction
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"A Noiseless Patient Spider" is a lyric poem written by the 19th Century American poet Walt Whitman. Whitman originally wrote the poem as part of a longer piece, "Whispers of Heavenly Death," for The Broadway, A London Magazine in 1868. The poem was later republished in an 1891 edition of Leaves of Grass. Although much shorter than many of his well-known poems, "A Noiseless Patient Spider" deals with one of the central concerns in Whitman's work: what it means to be an individual seeking and creating connections with the larger world.
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“A Noiseless Patient Spider” Summary
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The speaker noticed a silent spider, standing alone on a small ledge. The speaker further noticed that the spider, in order to investigate its huge, empty environment, sent out thread after thread. The spider is described as doing this constantly and perpetually, without appearing to get tired or slow down.
The poem then addresses the speaker's soul, which likewise stands isolated and unconnected in a vast, open place. The soul is described as continually considering, exploring, and seeking connections. The speaker says that the soul will go on doing this until it succeeds in finding and creating links between itself and its surroundings.
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“A Noiseless Patient Spider” Themes
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Isolation and Connection
“A Noiseless Patient Spider” explores the relationship between the individual self and the larger world. The poem depicts a spider that is isolated in space but actively sending filaments "out of itself," seeking connection as it builds its web. This spider becomes an extended metaphor for the speaker’s soul, which is likewise isolated and working to find a sense of connection. Ultimately, the poem suggests that in spite of the loneliness people might experience as individuals, the work of the soul is to constantly seek and make connections—however daunting such a task may be.
The speaker begins by describing the spider as “isolated” and in a “vacant vast surrounding,” essentially meaning it’s all by itself as far as the eye can see. Yet the spider is also described as “patient” and “tireless” as it “explore[s]” its surroundings and makes its web. It “launch[es] forth” filament after filament into this unknown space, indicating its willingness to put itself out there, as it were—something the poem thus implies is an invaluable part of establishing meaningful connections; after all, the spider can't expect the web to build itself.
The spider then becomes a metaphor for the speaker’s soul, which is described as “detached, in measureless oceans of space”—mirroring the image of the spider’s isolation. Like the spider with its filaments, the soul is described as “ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing” out “gossamer thread” to “catch somewhere.” The spiritual work of the speaker, then, reflects the work of the spider; the soul, like the spider, must actively seek the connections it desires, and can do so by sending forth parts of itself.
What exactly this means is open to interpretation, though it's possible that those "gossamer threads" refer to person's personal writing, artwork, or other creative endeavor that might reflect who they are. What's clear is that once a connection is formed, it becomes a sort of "anchor"—offering the speaker stability and comfort within the "measureless oceans of space."
The poem switches to the future tense in its final lines, which suggests that the work of the soul is ongoing: perhaps, just as spiders have to create new webs many times, the soul too must constantly seek new connections, constantly send forth the "threads" that will anchor it. The future tense also conveys a sense of uncertainty in the poem, since the connections are not yet complete.
At the same time, however, since readers can see that the spider’s work is both natural and inevitable—readers trust that the spider will create its web eventually, since that is simply what spiders do—the metaphor between spider and soul imparts a sense of hope in the poem’s ending. Like the spider with its web, the poem suggests that the soul will at some point find the “bridge” it “need[s].” In other words, the soul will succeed in making a connection to someone or something else.
What's more, while the poem depicts both the spider and the soul as isolated, the metaphor it creates between them suggests that connection already exists. The poem begins with a moment of connection between the speaker and the outside world, since it begins with the speaker observing the spider. Like the spider who “stood,” the soul is described as “standing,” and where the spider “explore[d]” its “surrounding,” the soul is “surrounded” by “space.” The words “surrounding” and “surrounded” imply a presence outside the self, even if that presence is at first experienced as “measureless oceans of space.” Through its metaphor of a natural web, the poem thus ultimately suggests that people seek and make connections within a universe that is already, like a web, infinitely complex, meaningful, and interconnected.
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Creation and Creativity
“A Noiseless Patient Spider” presents a spider engaged in an act of creation, as it makes its web. The speaker’s soul, too, is engaged in a creative act, as the soul crafts its own “web” of connection. The poem thus suggests that any creative act (including the writing of poems) is an act of exploration, in that it involves both finding and making connections between apparently unlike things.
Both the spider and the soul are depicting as finding and actively creating connections. The spider “explore[s]” its “surrounding,” and the speaker’s soul is described as “musing, venturing … [and] seeking.” These verbs suggest intellectual exploration, as the spider and the soul search for the “spheres” with which they can connect.
The spider and soul are also described with verbs that emphasize agency. The spider “launch[es] forth” its filaments, “unreeling them” and “tirelessly speeding them.” The soul, similarly, is “ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing” its own “gossamer thread.” The spider and soul are thus shown as actively forging and crafting connections. On a metaphorical level, this might reflect the intellectual exploration and crafting involved in the act of writing.
To that end, the parts of this poem itself can be read as “filaments” of a web. The long lines of varied lengths visually suggest the threads of a web, each “launch’d forth” from the left margin, as though into the “measureless … space” of the rest of the page. The commas at the line endings suggest that each line is a complete filament, but that the act of creation is ongoing. The full stops at the end of each stanza could be read as enclosing the two webs suggested by the poem: that of the spider and of the soul. The poem as a whole brings these two webs together into one.
The poem thus enacts the crafting of connections that it describes. Indeed, the poem’s extended metaphor forges a connection between two apparently unlike things—the spider and the speaker’s soul. And though the poem’s use of “you” refers to the speaker’s soul, it also turns the poem outward; the second person brings the readers into the poem’s web, as though they are in dialogue with the speaker. The poem itself thus is essentially a complete act of a creation, a web that forges connections between the speaker, the spider, and the reader.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “A Noiseless Patient Spider”
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Lines 1-3
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,The poem starts by establishing the image that will develop into the its extended metaphor: “A noiseless patient spider,” which the speaker notices standing all alone on a small ledge (“a little promontory”).
While letting readers know that the speaker is looking at a spider, the complicated syntax (basically, the arrangement of words) here also immediately suggests that something else is at work. A more syntactically straightforward sentence might begin: “I mark’d where, on a little promontory, a spider stood isolated.”
Instead, the speaker's “I” follows after the "spider," as though the “I” is the "spider." That is, it feels for a beat as though the opening line is describing the speaker; think of how someone might say, "A lover of spaghetti, Mary aways went to Italian restaurants"—that first phrase describes "Mary."
The two—the spider and the speaker—are further linked by the assonance of the long /i/ sounds in both words. The adjective “noiseless” to describe the spider is also interesting; rather than an adjective like “silent” or “quiet,” the negative form of “noiseless” gives readers a sense of what the spider is not, or of what the spider is refraining from doing. This creates a sensation of absence (the absence of noise, specifically), that reflects spider's isolation.
The adjective “patient,” meanwhile, personifies the spider, giving it a sense of dignity and consciousness. That the spider is placed on a “promontory” is also suggestive. A promontory is a place of high ground (a kind of lookout) that people usually think of in human terms (a high rock, a headland, a bluff). This description of where the spider “stands” thus further personifies it and ennobles it at the same time. All of this, in turn, will serve to make the poem's extended metaphor, in which the spider and speaker's soul are compared, clearer.
In the third line, the speaker repeats the word “mark’d” to tell readers more of what the speaker has noticed. This repetition, which functions anaphorically (even if the “mark’d in the previous line is preceded by “I”), reminds the reader that the speaker is right there in the scene, watching the spider. It also gives the poem an energy of repeated outward momentum that predicts the outward-reaching action of the spider.
Finally, the spider’s surroundings are described as both “vacant” and “vast.” The alliteration here adds emphasis to the sense of emptiness, even as the shift from the long /ay/ sound at the beginning of “vacant” to the short /ah/ sounds in its second syllable and in “vast” imply a sense of movement and change.
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Lines 4-5
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
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Lines 6-8
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, -
Lines 9-10
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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“A Noiseless Patient Spider” Symbols
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Filaments/Thread
A filament is a thin thread or fiber. In “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” the spider is described as “launch[ing] forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself” in order to make its web. The filaments are, then, within the poem, the literal material of creation.
As the image is developed in the second stanza, with the speaker’s soul “throwing” its “gossamer thread,” the filaments come to stand, symbolically, for all the ways that we as people seek and form connections. These connections could be interpersonal connections with other people. They could be ideas connecting one thing to another. They could also be poetic metaphors which bring together unlike things, as in the metaphor of the poem, which brings together speaker and spider.
Interestingly, a filament is also a kind of electrical wire that produces heat or light. As light is itself a symbol of intelligence and life, Whitman’s filaments, understood this way, are life-giving connections, offering illumination and insight.
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“A Noiseless Patient Spider” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Extended Metaphor
An extended metaphor provides the overarching structure for the poem. The speaker begins by describing a spider that “stood isolated,” but that “launch'd forth” its threads to make its web over and over again. The poem’s second stanza then establishes that the spider is a metaphor for the speaker's soul.
Like the spider, the speaker's soul is isolated, as it is “detached, in measureless oceans of space.” The speaker goes on to describe the soul “ceaselessly … throwing” its own “gossamer thread,” and says that, just as the spider will continue its work until it makes its web, the soul will continue its own efforts until “the bridge you will need be formed.”
In other words, the speaker’s soul will continue seeking connections until it succeeds. The spider thus serves as a visual metaphor, extended throughout the poem, for what it means to experience aloneness but nevertheless try, over and over again, to form connections with the surrounding world.
The poem’s metaphor also serves another purpose. Metaphor is a device that brings together—or makes connections between—unlike things. In this sense, the poem enacts what it describes. While the speaker’s soul is depicted as seeking and creating connections, the poem crafts its own connections, by creating a metaphor from one stanza to the next.
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End-Stopped Line
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Personification
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Apostrophe
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Repetition
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Anaphora
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Assonance
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Asyndeton
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Consonance
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“A Noiseless Patient Spider” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Gossamer
- Mark'd
- Promontory
- Filament
- Detached
- Venturing
- Ductile
Gossamer-
The word “gossamer” comes from a Middle English adjective used to describe the appearance of cobwebs in the air. The word is connected to the word “goose,” perhaps because the lightness of cobwebs resembles the lightness of goose feathers. The word later came to be used for anything that is as light and delicate as those webs.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Noiseless Patient Spider”
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Form
“A Noiseless Patient Spider” is a free verse poem made of two stanzas. Each stanza is a quintain, meaning that each has five lines. Each stanza is also a single sentence. The first stanza describes the spider that the speaker sees, while the second stanza describes the speaker’s soul.
Though the poem does not follow a specific form (like a sonnet or villanelle) the form it creates is still important to its meaning. The poem describes two things (the spider and the soul), with one stanza dedicated to each. The poem also implicitly describes two webs (the one made by the speaker and the one made by the soul). The stanzas could be read as visual representations of these webs, while the white space between them could be read as the space that both the spider and speaker—and, implicitly, the poem—are trying to bridge.
Finally, the five-line stanzas are important, as the odd number of lines in each creates a sense of irresolution in the poem, in keeping with the sense of connections that are not yet sure or complete. At the same time, Whitman brings this into balance and a kind of resolution by combining the two stanzas into a poem that, as a whole, has an even number of lines.
Additionally, while the poem does not follow a strict form, it can be understood as working within the mode of Ars Poetica. An Ars Poetica is a poem that comments on the art of writing poems. In "A Noiseless Patient Spider," one could read the images of creation and creativity as images of writing poetry; the poet sends out lines, or "filaments," on the page, and seeks to make connections in creating metaphors.
Since the lines on the page could read as visual filaments, and the stanzas as visual representations of webs, the poem suggests that it in itself is the "web" created by the speaker's soul. This reading of the poem is consistent with Whitman's poetry as a whole, which emphasized, always, seeking and creating connections between the self (or the soul) and the surrounding world.
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Meter
“A Noiseless Patient Spider” is a free verse poem, meaning that it has no set meter. Whitman is credited with being the first American poet to write in free verse, as he wanted poetry to be close to human speech. The poem is varied in its movements and sounds; for example, the variation in the length of lines creates shifts in its pacing and rhythm.
At the same time, this poem, like much of Whitman’s work, is highly musical, rhythmic, and patterned. The poem uses trochees, dactyls, and spondees to create a sense of energy and forward momentum. While the poem doesn't have a specific meter, then, it still largely contains a sensation of falling rhythm, of long, stressed beats moved forward to short, unstressed beats.
For example, the first line contains trochees, in which the first syllable is stressed and the second unstressed:
... noiseless patient spider,
The clause "filament, filament, filament" in the fourth line, meanwhile, contains dactyls, in which the first syllable of each is stressed and the following two unstressed:
... filament, filament, filament ...
Lines 8 and 10 combine strings of trochees and dactyls:
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking ...
And:
... gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere ...
Again, while not true, steady meter, the overall effect is one of spurts of falling rhythm that push the poem forward. There is a repeated rush of energy—a sense closely aligned with the poem’s description of constant, repeated outward movements by both the spider and speaker.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, “A Noiseless Patient Spider” has no fixed rhyme scheme. The lack of strict meter or rhyme keeps the poem from feeling too constrained or stilted; instead it is free-flowing and unpredictable, qualities that echo the poem's content and thematic ideas. The poem itself feels exploratory, as if the speaker is tossing lines of verse into the "measureless oceans" of the blank page just as the spider and soul launch forth threads into their "vacant vast surrounding[s]" in the hope of finding a sense of connection.
That said, the poem does use assonance throughout, and one instance of slant rhyme, to create a sense of musicality and rhythm. For example, the first stanza contains numerous repetitions of /or/ sounds: "explore," "promontory," "forth." These shared sounds link the spider to the idea of exploration and to the tirelessness of its efforts. Finally, the poem uses slant end rhyme with “hold” and “O my soul.” This connects the two words, underscoring the desire of the soul for find a steady "anchor" on which to "hold."
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“A Noiseless Patient Spider” Speaker
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The speaker of “A Noiseless Patient Spider” is neither named nor gendered. Although the reader might assume that the speaker is Whitman—a reading supported by the poem’s depictions of creativity, as in the writing of poetry—this is not necessarily be the case. In fact, many of Whitman’s poems explored the meaning of the “I” and the individual, and the speaker of his poems is often both particular and expansive, as in the famous lines from his poem “Song of Myself”: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes).”
In his efforts to create a poetry that was truly American and democratic, Whitman sought to bring many different people and even elements of the earth into the voice of his speaker. Thus, the “I” in the poem could be any specific person, and also a more open-ended, inclusive “I.”
What the reader can tell from the beginning of the poem is that the speaker is observant, noticing the spider and all of its activity. Interestingly, in the second stanza, the “I” disappears, as the speaker addresses “you O my soul” for the rest of the poem. It is the soul, addressed in the second person, that is credited with the connection-making and efforts so like those of the spider. This could be read as a development of the speaker in the sense that here, the speaker as a separate, detached “I” disappears, and what is left is the soul working in tandem with the surrounding world and universe.
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“A Noiseless Patient Spider” Setting
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The setting of the poem is interestingly ambiguous. The reader is told that the spider stands on “a little promontory,” and that this promontory is within a “vacant vast surrounding.” The speaker’s soul, likewise, is described as standing in “measureless oceans of space.” The reader could interpret this setting in many ways—as an open expanse of land, a place overlooking the ocean, etc. At the same time, what is “vacant” and “vast” to a spider is not so vast to a human being, and the “measureless oceans of space” the speaker sees could be blue sky overhead, seen from any location. What the reader knows is that the setting must be a place inhabited by both the spider and the speaker, so it is somewhere on the earth, or maybe the earth as a whole, from which both spider and speaker look out into the larger universe.
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Literary and Historical Context of “A Noiseless Patient Spider”
Literary Context
Whitman first published “A Noiseless Patient Spider” as part of a longer sequence, “Whispers of Heavenly Death,” in 1868. The Broadway, a new literary magazine based in London, had invited Whitman and several other well-known American writers to submit their work, and Whitman apparently wrote the sequence specifically for the magazine.
“Whispers of Heavenly Death” revolves around the speaker contemplating death, and specifically, the death of his male lover. One poem in the sequence, "Of Him I Love Day and Night," begins: “Of him I love day and night I dream’d I heard he was dead, / And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love.” Another, "As If a Phantom Caress'd Me," reads: “As if a phantom caress’d me, / I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore; / But the one I thought was with me now as I walk by the shore, the one I loved that caress’d me, / As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has utterly disappear’d.”
In much of Whitman’s work, these clear articulations of the speaker’s love for other men in early versions of poems disappear in later versions of the poems. In this case, however, the sequence was republished in an 1891 edition of Leaves of Grass intact. This context for the poem—the speaker having lost “him I love”— sheds light on the isolation and solitude the speaker experiences.
On a larger scale, Whitman wrote at a time (the mid- to late-19th century, before, during, and after the U.S. Civil War) when writers were actively creating what American poetry and literature could be. Whitman was interested in creating a uniquely American poetics, a kind of democratic aesthetic, and he is considered the first American poet to have written in free verse, seeing it as closer to the sounds of real speech.
At the same time, his poetry was highly influenced by music, and especially opera, an influence that can be heard in the repetition and cadences of his lines. Whitman was also profoundly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the ideas of Transcendentalism, which emphasized a return to nature. Readers can see these ideas reflected in “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” as the speaker looks to an element of nature (a spider) as a model for how to create and seek connections. The sense of interconnection in the poem, and its preoccupation with the soul, also reflect the Transcendental idea of the Over-Soul, a kind of larger consciousness of which everything and everyone is part.
Historical Context
Whitman wrote “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” and the sequence of which it was a part, in 1868, just three years after the end of the U.S. Civil War. Whitman was a nurse during the war, and cared for wounded Union soldiers in hospitals in Washington, D.C. He wrote a number of poems that directly refer to these experiences, as well as elegies for Abraham Lincoln, notably "O Captain! My Captain!" and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”
While “A Noiseless Patient Spider” and “Whispers of Heavenly Death” are less obviously connected to this historical context, they do reflect a time of grief and mourning, and a sense of needing to start over or find a way to begin again, as the speaker and spider start over and over again to create their webs. The “vacant vast surrounding” in the poem could convey a sense of spiritual vacancy left by Lincoln’s death and the trauma of the war. Within the poem, then, Whitman considers what it means to be a poet seeking connection and creating art in this aftermath.
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More “A Noiseless Patient Spider” Resources
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External Resources
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Early Manuscript of "A Noiseless Patient Spider" — See an early manuscript copy of the poem, as well as manuscripts of all of Whitman's work.
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Biography of Walt Whitman — The Poetry Foundation website has biographical information about Whitman, as well as links to many of his poems.
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Reading of "A Noiseless Patient Spider" — Hear actor Paul Giamatti read "A Noiseless Patient Spider" as part of this short Poetry Foundation podcast.
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Emerson's Essay on "The Over-Soul" — Read the full text of Emerson's essay "The Over-Soul" to understand its influence on Whitman's poem.
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Whitman and the Civil War — Read this article on Whitman's work during the Civil War for historical context on the years leading up to his writing "A Noiseless Patient Spider."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Walt Whitman
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