What is the relationship of denotation and connotation in the poem "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman?

One of the component poems of Walt Whitman's
Leaves of Grass, "A Noiseless Patient Spider" could be described as
a textbook illustration of the relationship of denotation and connotation. The first
half of the brief ten-line poem comprises the denotation. In those lines, "noiseless,
patient" signifies the literal, denotative, stillness of a spider until it is called
upon to feed or flee. There, "filament, filament, filament" launched "out of itself"
signifies the web-spinning occupation of a spider.

The
second half comprises the connotation. In lines 6-10, the poet creates an association,
or analogy, between the spider and his "Soul" that is "Ceaselessly musing, venturing,
throwing" out "gossamer thread" that is a metaphorical yearning to be united in the vast
cosmos with a transcendent reality. The word for spider's web in Latin is
textus and, to put it differently, the Latin
textus is the root for our word text. Thus it
could be said the connotation is that a writer 'spins a web of words' to create a
textus. In "A Noiseless Patient Spider" the poet weaves the text by
which he attains the transcendence he longs for.