The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly

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.

Submitted by Emily Ezust [Administrator]

Authorship

• by Vachel Lindsay (1879 - 1931), "The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly", appears in The Congo and Other Poems, first published 1914 [ author's text not yet checked against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

• by Louis Gruenberg (1884 - 1964), "The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly", op. 22 no. 3, published 1925, rev. 2005 [medium voice and piano], from Animals and Insects, no. 3. [
   text verified 1 time
  ]
• by M. Ryan Taylor (b. 1972), "The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly", 1998, rev. 2005 [medium voice and piano], from Lions, Spiders, & Flies, no. 2. [
   text verified 1 time
  ]

Text added to the website: 2007-07-29.
Last modified: 2014-06-16 10:02:26
Line count: 12
Word count: 63

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