I think that you will like it: a spinster, that is, a maiden passed the age of girlhood, is the speaker.
I watch her in the corner there, As, restless, bold, and unafraid, She slips and floats along the air Till all her subtile house is made.
Her home, her bed, her daily food, All from that hidden store she draws; She fashions it and knows it good, By instinct's strong and sacred laws.
No tenuous threads to weave her nest, She seeks and gathers there or here; But spins it from her faithful breast, Renewing still, till leaves are sere.
Then, worn with toil, and tired of life, In vain her shining traps are set.
Her frost hath hushed the insect strife And gilded flies her charm forget.
But swinging in the snares she spun, She sways to every wintry wind: Her joy, her toil, her errand done, Her corse the sport of storms unkind.
The symbolism of these verses will appear to you more significant when I tell you that it refers especially to conditions in New England in the present period.

The finest American population--perhaps the finest Anglo-Saxons ever produced--were the New Englanders of the early part of the century.

But with the growth of the new century, the men found themselves attracted elsewhere, especially westward; their shrewdness, their energies, their inventiveness, were needed in newer regions.

And they wandered away by thousands and thousands, never to come back again, and leaving the women behind them.

Gradually the place of these men was taken by immigrants of inferior development--but the New England women had nothing to hope for from these strangers.