Weak with nice sense, the chaste Mɪᴍᴏsᴀ stands, From each rude touch withdraws her timid hands; Oft as light clouds o’er-pass the Summer-glade, Alarm… - Erasmus Darwin

Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!

So on his Nɪɢʜᴛᴍᴀʀᴇ through the evening fog
Flits the squab Fiend o’er fen, and lake, and bog;
Seeks some love-wilder’d Maid with sleep oppress’d,
Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.
—Such as of late amid the murky sky
Was mark’d by Fᴜsᴇʟɪ’s poetic eye;
Whose daring tints, with Sʜᴀᴋᴇsᴘᴇᴀʀ’s happiest grace,
Gave to the airy phantom form and place.—
Back o’er her pillow sinks her blushing head,
Her snow-white limbs hang helpless from the bed;
While with quick sighs, and suffocative breath,
Her interrupted heart-pulse swims in death.
—Then shrieks of captured towns, and widows’ tears,
Pale lovers stretch’d upon their blood-stain’d biers,
The headlong precipice that thwarts her flight,
The trackless desert, the cold starless night,
And stern-eye’d Murder with his knife behind,
In dread succession agonize her mind.
O’er her fair limbs convulsive tremors fleet,
Start in her hands, and struggle in her feet;
In vain to scream with quivering lips she tries,
And strains in palsy’d lids her tremulous eyes;
In vain she wills to run, fly, swim, walk, creep;
The Wɪʟʟ presides not in the bower of Sʟᴇᴇᴘ.
—On her fair bosom sits the Demon-Ape
Erect, and balances his bloated shape;
Rolls in their marble orbs his Gorgon-eyes,
And drinks with leathern ears her tender cries.

Soon shall thy arm, Uɴᴄᴏɴǫᴜᴇʀ'ᴅ Sᴛᴇᴀᴍ! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear
The flying-chariot through the fields of air.
—Fair crews triumphant, leaning from above,
Shall wave their fluttering kerchiefs as they move;
Or warrior-bands alarm the gaping crowd,
And armies shrink beneath the shadowy cloud.