"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."
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Natural philosophersPhilosophers from EnglandBiologists from EnglandBotanists from EnglandPhysicians from England
Original Language: English
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Sources
[Nightmare], The Botanic Garden (1791), Part ii, Canto iii, ll. 51-78.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erasmus_Darwin
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Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802) was an English physician, natural philosopher, physiologist, inventor and poet. He was one of the founder members of the Lunar Society, a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and natural philosophers. He was a member of the Darwin — Wedgwood family, which most famously includes his grandson, Charles Darwin.
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