Spider poems

You wouldn't think so, but it turns out that there are quite a few poems out there about spiders. Some are quite good.

Two are classics of American poetry.  First, there is a A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman. (Note that only the first half of this poem is actually about the spider.)

The second is Design, the marvelous sonnet by Robert Frost. (Just imagine -- a sonnet about a spider!) Its opening words are wonderful:

"I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth"

And its last line is perfection itself:
"If design govern in a thing so small."

P.S. It occurred to me that there probably really is something called a "dimpled spider." And sure enough . . . here's a photo of one. (And here's a white heal-all.)