Dear humble friend in labour and in play,

Say to what region thou hast fled away!

Week after week thy busy life was spent

Within these classic walls in calm content.

Thy noble patience, like the Muse’s beams,

Inspied my efforts, and adorn’d my themes;

Till I had grown to hold thee as a guide,

To all my hopes and ventures close ally’d.

How well my thoughts thy talents could engage!

How shone thy magic on the Tryout’s page!

Tho’ calm thy manner, and thy speeches brief,

Well might I call thee Editor-in-Chief!

Shall any say thy place was slight or low,

Or doubt the lustre of thy heav’nly glow?

Let such consider with observant eye

The annals of the myriad years gone by.

A spider ’twas that rescu’d Islam’s head

When from the foe within a cave he fled;

Nor can proud Scotia venture to despise

The lowly beast that help’d her monarch rise.

Ev’n the curs’d Hun must speak with bated breath

Of him who sav’d old Frederick from death.

In short, we find the spider thron’d in state;

Friend of the Nine, and guardian of the great!

But thou, tried comrade of my busy hours—

Whither hast crept with all thy magic pow’rs?

Hath some strange vision of thy spider-brain

Mov’d thee to quit our sordid sphere of pain?

Warm was thy home, and well-arrang’d thy lair;

Thy meat and drink supply’d with tender care;

Were juicy flies too few and far between,

Or was aught lacking in the kerosene?

Sadly I view thy vacant dwelling-place—

Thou transient trav’ller of an ancient race!

Would that I might, with Fancy’s curious pow’r,

Trace thy meanderings to thy hidden bow’r;

Mark ev’ry secret step, and see thee stand

A sceptred potentate of spider-land!

What wonders unsuspected may exist

In those far provinces of web and mist!

Gossamer castles with their moats of dew;

And fairy palaces too small to view;

Or is thine Empire of a darker kind—

Some bury’d spot the world hath left behind?

Own’st thou some temple, where thy strands embrace

The crumbling substance of a Pharaoh’s face,

Or some black crypt beneath the shifting sand

Where a forgotten city us’d to stand?

In Tyre and Carthage, Babylon and Ur,

Luxor and Karnak, do thy legions stir;

For thee and such as thou the world was made—

Thy reign commences when our own’s decay’d.

Down immemorial steps, to man unknown,

Thy spinning tribes drape many a gilded throne;

Ram-headed gods; objects too dark to name,

Altars that bore of old an impious flame,

Wing’d shadowy lions wrought of rock and brass,

And all the treasures despots can amass—

These thy dominions, vanish’d wand’ring one

Who lately bask’d ’neath Haverhill’s bright sun!

But whilst I mourn, or thro’ my fancy grope,

Within my heart bestirs a thrill of hope;

For bounteous Pan, who rules the vernal wold,

Can oft restore the blessings lost of old:

Content I’ll wait, and trust that he will bring

My faithful spider with returning Spring!