A Noiseless Patient Spider

It was originally part of his poem "Whispers of Heavenly Death", written expressly for The Broadway, A London Magazine, issue 10 (October 1868), numbered as stanza "3."

It was retitled "A Noiseless Patient Spider" and reprinted as part of a larger cluster in Passage to India (1871).

Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my soul.The first drafted ideas for "A Noiseless Patient Spider" appear in a notebook held by Whitman in the mid 19th century.

Its second appearance, in Whitman’s Passage to India (1871), makes this distinction, evidenced by the use of "lower-case capitals" in printing the first word (of more than one letter), which was a publishing convention used in the 19th century to designate the beginning of a poem.

Ingolf Dahl, a German-American composer, developed a three part women's chorus with piano accompaniment, using the poem "A Noiseless Patient Spider" as lyrics.

This instrumental interpretation was performed by the American String Quartet in Ann Arbor, Michigan on February 7, 1999.