Futility

A recent cable tells of the interest scientists are taking in a spider at Akron, U.S.A., which is persistently spinning a web on the hands of a clock only to have the threads torn apart time after time as the hands move on.

Poor patient spider, puzzled that hard Fate,
’Gainst which all things in every age have fought,
Should, moved by laws stern and inviolate,
So bring his cherished enterprise to nought.
The hands move on and, moving, bring his plans
To nothingness; even as hapless man’s.
We spin our webs about the world’s dull face,
And Time’s slow hands implacably move on;
Till, in a little while, there is no trace
But battered gossamer; all else is gone—
Whither? No man can say, nor reason why;
Save that the game goes on until we die.

Striving for permanence, we weave again—
Poor mites within the vast Impermanent—
Strive on to find our weaving ever vain
Against a power that never may relent.
Pharaohs have woven nobly, and have gone,
And still the slow, relentless hands move on.

Yet if, in after years, men chance to find
In some forgotten nook a tarnished thread,
And know it for the weaving of a mind
That planned and hoped aforetime, and is dead,
Should but a wisp of this unstable stuff
Serve as a memory, it is enough.