Dilating in water, shrinking in the sun;
I know it for a strange sea-animal now,
Shaped like the brain of a man. Can it be true
That, as the poets fable in their songs
Of Aphrodite, life itself was born
Here, in the sea?”
Nicomachus looked at him.
“That’s a dark riddle, my son. You will not hear
An answer in the groves of Academe,
Not even from Plato. When you go to Athens