A Noiseless Patient Spider

After doing this one for my teaching with Brit, the whole bridge aspect made a lot more sense. It seems that Whitman is saying that all throughout life, these sort of "filament strings" are attached everywhere. This comes with experiences, adventures, and just everyday life that is thrown at you. People go through life just taking it in like a noiseless patient spider. At the end of their life, they have a bridge made of all the filament. The soul is like a sleepless spider looking to experience life. It must throw out the filament throughout life before a bridge or anchor can be created. Whitman is comparing the human soul to the spider and does so through "filament" or the experiences of life that create the soul as a whole in the end.

I thank you god

The first thing I noticed about this poem was how god wasn't capitalized. That has always been very strange to me since I grew up in a christian school and not capitalizing god was a sin. But the only thing capitalized in the title is I and god is capitalized in the poem so I don't think there was a special meaning of that. I like in the first stanza how "you" is all capitalized, putting emphasis on God. It goes into expressing the love and adornment of the world around him. He gets into great detail about the beauty of nature. The use of the word "which" in the last couple of lines in that stanza is peculiar. It is sort of grouping natural, infinite, and yes into one category. The next stanza is all put in parenthesis. It gives a side note feel or an inner thought look to it. The third stanza focuses on the human senses. It touches on the fact that some things seem unimaginable. The last stanza is put into parenthesis again. It gives me a sense of renewing or rebirth. "(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)."