208 The Poets and Nature. 



With something of the same completeness came upon me 

 the discovery of the all-pervading presence of spiders. 

 Science calls them by the names of beasts of prey, and it 

 was well to do so. For if you will take a foot of ground 

 out in the country any summer's day as your sphere of 

 observation, and watch for a while, you will see the cat-spider 

 come creeping along, suddenly springing as it goes at every- 

 thing that looks like a fly ; the wolf-spider pass rapidly 

 across with business-like directness; the lynx-spider sidle 

 from blade to blade. Or spread a handkerchief under a 

 bush, and strike the branches with a stick. Spiders come 

 tumbling out, or hang in mid-air by the threads that, even 

 against so sudden an alarm, they have all prepared. 



So far, then, the spider in verse. But, as I said at start- 

 ing, the creature is infinitely better known by its handicraft 

 than its presence, and poetical references to its web are in 

 porportion more numerous. There is, however, but little 

 variety in the treatment. Occasionally the web is called 

 "arras," "tapestry," "the lonely spider's thin grey pall," a 

 "clue," a "bower," but, as a rule, it is either the open air 

 "filmy," "silken" thread that catches the garden fly : 



" So the false spider when her nets are spread, 

 Deep ambush'd in her silent den does lie ; 

 And feels far off the trembling of her thread, 

 Whose filmy cord should bind the struggling fly, 

 Then if at last she finds him fast beset, 

 She issues forth and runs along her bower ; 

 She joys to touch the captive in her net 

 And drag the little wretch in triumph home." Dryden. 



Or the dusty-covered cobweb of the attic or cellar and 

 neglected library : 



" For a deep dust (which time does softly shed 

 Where only time does come) their covers bear, 

 On which grave spiders streets of web had spread 

 Subtle and slight, as the grave writers were." 



