Arachne and the Poets. 209 



Or other vacant rooms where 



" Her disembowelled web 

 Arachne in a hall or kitchen spreads 

 Obvious to vagrant flies ; she secret stands 

 Within her woven cell ; the humming prey, 

 Regardless of their fate, rush on the toils 

 Inextricable ; nor will aught avail 

 Their arts, or arms, or shapes of lovely hue. 

 The wasp insidious, and the buzzing drone, 

 A butterfly, proud of expanded wings 

 Distinct with gold, entangled in her snares 

 Useless resistance make : with eager strides 

 She, towering, flies to her extended spoils." Wyatt. 



Or again in Montgomery : 



"Around thy bell o'er mildewed leaves 

 His ample web a spider weaves ; 

 A wily ruffian gaunt and grim, 

 His labyrinthine toils he spreads 

 Pensile and light, their glossy threads 

 Bestrewed with many wing and limb ; 

 Even in thy chalice he prepares 

 His deadly poison and delusive snares. 



Swift as death's own arrows dart, 

 On him the spider springs, 

 Wounds his side with dexterous art 

 Winds the web about his wings ; 

 Quick as he came, recoiling then, 

 The villain van'shes in his den. 



The desperate fly perceives too late 



The hastening crisis of his fate ; 



Disaster crowds upon disaster, 



And every struggle to get free 



Snaps the hopes of liberty, 



And draws the knots of bondage faster." 



This " triumphant" descent of the spider upon its victim 

 is a very favourite fancy of the poets; and, though I 

 have never myself recognised any such exultation in the 

 demeanour of the little fly-catcher, I have often imagined 

 that I detected a high- stepping affected way about it when, 

 having done up its prey into a parcel, it minces off to its 



o 



