Happy Darwin Day

It's Chaz Darwin's 197th birthday. A poem for the old guy. (After Alexander Pope, edited and stolen from myself and the old guy's classic conclusion.)


See thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth
All matter quick, and bursting into birth:
Above, how high bacteria may go!
Around, inside! extremophiles below!
The breath of the Creator did endow
And spring to life the fundamental bough,
Cleaved through the aeons, now a million-score,
Proliferating, pruned in nature's war.
Vast tree of life! from simpler stuff began;
Nature, including nature's student, man;
Beast, bird, fish, microbe which no eye can see,
For evolution is diversity.
New forms develop, shapes and textures change
Within mutation's power to rearrange.
No branch is sacred, for there is no void
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed.
No tree is felled whene'er a branch is snapped,
For nature's law is "Evermore adapt!"
Forms endless, beautiful, a planet rife...
Yea, "There is grandeur in this view of life."