Organic life beneath the shoreless waves

From The Temple of Nature, Canto 1 by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin. Published in 1802. I think it detracts nothing from Charles Darwin's brilliance and insight to observe that there were, apparently, cognitive precursors within his family environment.

Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.