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Fell Oestrus buries in her rapid course
Her countless brood in stag, or bull, or horse;
Whose hungry larva eats its living way,
Hatch'd by the warmth, and issues into day.

— Erasmus Darwin The Temple of Nature (1804)

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More quotes by Erasmus Darwin

And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.

And the mass starts into a million suns;
Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst,
And second planets issue from the first.

The Botanic Garden (1791)

On the blasted heath
Fell Upas sits, the hydra-tree of death.

The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young
Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng.
The cruel larva mines its silky course,
And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse.

Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form:
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.

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