Omniana/Volume 1/The Gossamer

by Robert Southey

76. The Gossamer.

Spenser calls the gossamer

The fine nets, which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew.

Henry More alludes to this opinion, which seems to have been then commonly held.

As light and thin as cobwebs that do fly
In the blew air, caused by autumnal sun
That boils the dew that on the earth doth lie,
May seem this whitish rag then is the scum,
Unless that wiser men make't the field-spiders loom