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.
