Compare and contrast "A Noiseless Patient Spider" with "Dover Beach."

If I were you I would want to approach this question by
thinking about the two central analogies that are drawn in both of these excellent poems
and how they operate. This seems to me to be the obvious point of comparison between
these two texts.

In "A Noiseless Patient Spider," the
spider that the speaker sees flinging forth its filaments and making connections is
compared to the soul of the speaker, that likewise seems to be like the spider as it is
surrounded "in measureless oceans of space" and is trying to connect the "spheres" with
its thread:

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And you O my soul where you
stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of
space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the
spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be
formed, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer
thread you fling catch somewhere, O my
soul.

The spider and the soul
both are trying to build connections and bridges, and this is the point of comparison
that allows Whitman to explore how the soul seems to be flinging out threads to try and
connect to someone and to somewhere, desperate to find its identity in the world in
which it is "detached."

Likewise, in "Dover Beach," the
"grating roar" of the pebbles as the waves of the sea draw them back and them cast them
once again on the shore is compared to "The Sea of Faith," which, according to the
speaker, is withdrawing, just as the tide is withdrawing, leaving the world an exposed
and vulnerable place:

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The Sea of
Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's
shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle
furled.

But now I only
hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing
roar,

Retreating, to the
breath

Of the night wind, down the vast edges
drear

And naked shingles of the
world.

Note the emphasis on
the "naked shingles of the world." The sea becomes a powerful metaphor for the beliefs
that the speaker fears are vanishing from the world. Something powerful is gradually
leaving the world, leaving it "naked," and therefore open to pain, attack, and
vulnerable. This poem paints a bleak picture of the state of the world thanks to the
decline in religious faith.

So both poems contain
unforgettable analogies, as the spider throwing out its filaments is compared to the
soul in one, and the tide withdrawing is compared to the decline in religious faith in
the other.