"Self-moving Engines by [unbending springs]
May walk on earth, or flap their mimic wings;
In tubes of glass mercurial columns rise,
Or sink, obedient to the incumbent skies;
Or, as they touch the figured scale, repeat
The nice gradations of circumfluent heat.
But Reproduction, when the perfect Elf
Forms from fine glands another like itself,
Gives the true character of life and sense,
And parts the organic from the chemic Ens.— 30
Where milder skies protect the nascent brood,
And earth's warm bosom yields salubrious food;
Each new Descendant with superior powers
Of sense and motion speeds the transient hours;
Braves every season, tenants every clime,
And Nature rises on the wings of Time.
"As Life discordant elements arrests,
Rejects the noxious, and the pure digests;
[Combines with Heat] the fluctuating mass,
And gives a while solidity to gas; 40
Organic forms with chemic changes strive,
Live but to die, and die but to revive!
[Immortal matter] braves the transient storm,
Mounts from the wreck, unchanging but in form.—
"So, as the sages of the East record
In sacred symbol, or unletter'd word;
[Emblem of Life], to change eternal doom'd,
The beauteous form of fair Adonis bloom'd.—
On Syrian hills the graceful Hunter slain
Dyed with his gushing blood the shuddering plain; 50
And, slow-descending to the Elysian shade,
A while with Proserpine reluctant stray'd;
Soon from the yawning grave the bursting clay
Restor'd the Beauty to delighted day;
Array'd in youth's resuscitated charms,
And young Dione woo'd him to her arms.—
Pleased for a while the assurgent youth above
Relights the golden lamp of life and love;
Ah, soon again to leave the cheerful light,
And sink alternate to the realms of night. 60
II. "Hence ere Vitality, as time revolves,
Leaves the cold organ, and the mass dissolves;
The Reproductions of the living Ens
From sires to sons, unknown to sex, commence.
New buds and bulbs the living fibre shoots
On lengthening branches, and protruding roots;
Or on the father's side from bursting glands
The adhering young its nascent form expands;
In branching lines the parent-trunk adorns,
And parts ere long like plumage, hairs, or horns. 70
"[So the lone Truffle], lodged beneath the earth,
Shoots from paternal roots the tuberous birth;
No stamen-males ascend, and breathe above,
No seed-born offspring lives by female love.
From each young tree, for future buds design'd
Organic drops exsude beneath the rind;
[While these with appetencies] nice invite,
And those with apt propensities unite;
New embryon fibrils round the trunk combine
With quick embrace, and form the living line: 80
Whose plume and rootlet at their early birth
Seek the dry air, or pierce the humid earth.
"So safe in waves [prolific Volvox] dwells,
And five descendants crowd his lucid cells;
So [the male Polypus] parental swims,
And branching infants bristle all his limbs;
So [the lone Tænia], as he grows, prolongs
His flatten'd form with young adherent throngs;
Unknown to sex [the pregnant oyster] swells,
[And coral-insects] build their radiate shells; 90
Parturient Sires caress their infant train,
[And heaven-born Storge] weaves the social chain;
Successive births her tender cares combine,
And soft affections live along the line.
"On angel-wings the Goddess Form descends,
Round her fond broods her silver arms she bends;
White streams of milk her tumid bosom swell,
And on her lips ambrosial kisses dwell.
Light joys on twinkling feet before her dance
With playful nod, and momentary glance; 100
Behind, attendant on the pansied plain,
Young Psyche treads with Cupid in her train.
III. "In these lone births no tender mothers blend
Their genial powers to nourish or defend;
No nutrient streams from Beauty's orbs improve
These orphan babes of solitary love;
Birth after birth the line unchanging runs,
And fathers live transmitted in their sons;
Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds,
The same their manners, and the same their minds. 110
Till, as erelong successive buds decay,
And insect-shoals successive pass away,
Increasing wants the pregnant parents vex
With the fond wish to form ;
Whose milky rills with pure ambrosial food
Might charm and cherish their expected brood.
The potent wish in the productive hour
Calls to its aid [Imagination's power],
O'er embryon throngs with mystic charm presides,
And sex from sex the nascent world divides, 120
With soft affections warms the callow trains,
And gives to laughing Love [his nymphs and swains];
Whose mingling virtues interweave at length
The mother's beauty with the father's strength.
"So tulip-bulbs emerging from the seed,
Year after year unknown to sex proceed;
Erewhile the stamens and the styles display
Their petal-curtains, and adorn the day;
The beaux and beauties in each blossom glow
With wedded joy, or amatorial woe. 130
Unmarried Aphides prolific prove
For nine successions uninform'd of love;
New sexes next with softer passions spring,
Breathe the fond vow, and woo with quivering wing.
"So erst in Paradise creation's Lord,
As the first leaves of holy writ record,
From Adam's rib, who press'd the flowery grove,
And dreamt delighted of untasted love,
To cheer and charm his solitary mind,
Form'd a new sex, [the Mother of Mankind]. 140
—Buoy'd on light step the Beauty seem'd to swim,
And stretch'd alternate every pliant limb;
Pleased on Euphrates' velvet margin stood,
And view'd her playful image in the flood;
Own'd the fine flame of love, as life began,
And smiled enchantment on adoring Man.
Down her white neck and o'er her bosom roll'd,
Flow'd in sweet negligence her locks of gold;
Round her fine form the dim transparence play'd,
And show'd the beauties, that it seem'd to shade. 150
—Enamour'd Adam gaz'd with fond surprise,
And drank delicious passion from her eyes;
Felt the new thrill of young Desire, and press'd
The graceful Virgin to his glowing breast.—
The conscious Fair betrays her soft alarms,
Sinks with warm blush into his closing arms,
Yields to his fond caress with wanton play,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous, delay.