Is the spider a monster in miniature? His web is a cruel stair, to be sure, Designed artfully, cunningly placed, A delicate trap, carefully spun To bind the fly (innocent or unaware) In a net as strong as a chain or a gun.
Sometimes he ties down the female, when she is frail, With deft strokes and quick maneuvres and threads of silk: But courtship and wooing, whatever their form, are informed By extreme caution, prudence, and calculation, For the female spider, lazier and fiercer than the male suitor, May make a meal of him if she does not feel in the same mood, or if her appetite Consumes her far more than the revelation of love's consummation.
"Will you walk into my parlour?" said a spider to a fly;
" 'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to shew when you are there."
"Oh no, no!" said the little fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,
Within his little parlour – but she ne'er came out again!
– And now, dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed:
Unto an evil counsellor, close heart, and ear, and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly. — Mary Howitt (1829)
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
Watch out, I bite 