Mr Edwards and the Spider

I saw the spiders marching through the air,  Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day      In latter August when the hay      Came creaking to the barn.

But where        The wind is westerly,  Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly  Into the apparitions of the sky,  They purpose nothing but their ease and

Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea;  What are we in the hands of the great God?  It was in vain you set up thorn and briar      In battle array against the fire      And treason crackling in your blood;        For the wild thorns grow tame  And will do nothing to oppose the flame;  Your lacerations tell the losing game  You play against a sickness past your cure.

How will the hands be strong?

How will the heart endure?  A very little thing, a little worm,  Or hourglass-blazoned spider, it is said,      Can kill a tiger.

Will the dead      Hold up his mirror and affirm        To the four winds the smell  And flash of his authority?

It’s well  If God who holds you to the pit of hell,  Much as one holds a spider, will destroy,

Baffle and dissipate your soul.

As a small boy  On Windsor Marsh,

I saw the spider die  When thrown into the bowels of fierce fire:      There’s no long struggle, no desire      To get up on its feet and fly        It stretches out its feet  And dies.

This is the sinner’s last retreat;  Yes, and no strength exerted on the heat  Then sinews the abolished will, when

And full of burning, it will whistle on a brick.  But who can plumb the sinking of that soul?  Josiah Hawley, picture yourself cast      Into a brick-kiln where the blast      Fans your quick vitals to a coal—        If measured by a glass,  How long would it seem burning!

Let there pass  A minute, ten, ten trillion; but the blaze  Is infinite, eternal: this is death,

To die and know it.

This is the Black Widow, death.