Organic Life

ORGANIC LIFE beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nursed in Ocean's pearly caves;
First, forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,

Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;

These, as successive generations bloom,

New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;

Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,

And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.

Thus the tall Oak, the giant of the wood,

Which bears Britannia's thunders on the flood;

The Whale, unmeasured monster of the main,

The lordly Lion, monarch of the plain,

The Eagle soaring in the realms of air,

Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare,

Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd,

Of language, reason, and reflection proud,

With brow erect, who scorns this earthy sod,

And styles himself the image of his God;

Arose from rudiments of form and sense,

An embryon point, or microscopic ens!

ERASMUS  DARWIN

(The Temple of Nature. 1802. pp. 26--28)