come into this valley, is a guest in my dark halls. Let us have an
end to this discussion.'

It was the spider who spoke.

'The Work of the World is the making of cities and palaces. But it
is not for Man. What is Man? He only prepares my cities for me, and
mellows them. All his works are ugly, his richest tapestries are
coarse and clumsy. He is a noisy idler. He only protects me from
mine enemy the wind; and the beautiful work in my cities, the
curving outlines and the delicate weavings, is all mine. Ten years
to a hundred it takes to build a city, for five or six hundred more
it mellows, and is prepared for me; then I inhabit it, and hide away
all that is ugly, and draw beautiful lines about it to and fro.
There is nothing so beautiful as cities and palaces; they are the
loveliest places in the world, because they are the stillest, and so
most like the stars. They are noisy at first, for a little, before I
come to them; they have ugly corners not yet rounded off, and coarse
tapestries, and then they become ready for me and my exquisite work,
and are quite silent and beautiful. And there I entertain the regal
nights when they come there jewelled with stars, and all their train
of silence, and regale them with costly dust. Already nods, in a
city that I wot of, a lonely sentinel whose lords are dead, who
grows too old and sleepy to drive away the gathering silence that
infests the streets; tomorrow I go to see if he be still at his
post. For me Babylon was built, and rocky Tyre; and still men build
my cities! All the Work of the World is the making of cities, and
all of them I inherit.'