Evolution
Hence without parents, by spontaneous birth,
Rise the first specks of animated earth...
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nursed in ocean's pearly caves;
First, forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move in the mud or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and large limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
--Erasmus Darwin, from "The Temple of Nature," 1802
Rise the first specks of animated earth...
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nursed in ocean's pearly caves;
First, forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move in the mud or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and large limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
--Erasmus Darwin, from "The Temple of Nature," 1802