Temple of Nature
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
;Was born and nurs'd 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
- Erasmus Darwin, 1803 -