Tuesday, June 10, 2008

"Once I loved a spider..."






















The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly
by Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

Once I loved a spider
When I was born a fly,
A velvet-footed spider
With a gown of rainbow-dye.
She ate my wings and gloated.
She bound me with a hair.
She drove me to her parlor
Above her winding stair.
To educate young spiders
She took me all apart.
My ghost came back to haunt her.
I saw her eat my heart.




Text from Poetry Foundation.
Bookplate from A World History of Art.

3 comments:

Whodoo said...

Oh, I love it!

chayaruchama said...

Ain't love JUST like that ...?
[I NEVER can figure out which I am- spider, or fly...]

What a marvellous illustration.

BitterGrace said...

I never knew Vachel Lindsay wrote anything like that until I found it yesterday. I thought he was all kiddie poems and flower-fed buffaloes ...