Thrice magnified, in phantom shape, Her dream of size she saw, agape. Midway the vast round-raying beard A desiccated midge appeared; Whose body pricked the name of meal, Whose hair had growth in earth’s unreal; Provocative of dread and wrath, Contempt and horror, in one froth, Inextricable, insensible, His poison presence there would dwell, Declaring him her dream fulfilled, A catch to compliment the skilled; And she reduced to beaky skin, Disgraceful among kith and kin Against her corner, humped and aged, Arachne wrinkled, past enraged, Beyond disgust or hope in guile. Ridiculously volatile He seemed to her last spark of mind; And that in pallid ash declined Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt, Wherein throughout her frame she felt That he, the light wind’s libertine, Without a scoff, without a grin, And mannered like the courtly few, Who merely danced when light winds blew, Impervious to beak and claws, Tradition’s ruinous Whitebeard was; Of whom, as actors in old scenes, Had grannam weavers warned their weans, With word, that less than feather-weight, He smote the web like bolt of Fate. This muted drama, hour by hour, I watched amid a world in flower, Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid Their gray-blue o’er the grass’s blade, And still along the garden-run The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun. Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance Her visitor performed a dance; She puckered thinner; he the same As when on that light wind he came. Next day was told what deeds of night Were done; the web had vanished quite; With it the strange opposing pair; And listless waved on vacant air, For her adieu to heart’s content, A solitary filament. A READING OF LIFE THE VITAL CHOICE I OR shall we run with Artemis Or yield the breast to Aphrodite? Both are mighty; Both give bliss; Each can torture if divided; Each claims worship undivided, In her wake would have us wallow. II Youth must offer on bent knees Homage unto one or other; Earth, the mother, This decrees; And unto the pallid Scyther Either points us shun we either Shun or too devoutly follow. WITH THE HUNTRESS