Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair: Her brow shades frowns, although her eyes are sunny, Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despair, And her disdains are gall, her favors honey. A modest maid, decked with a blush of honor, Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love; The wonder of all eyes that look upon her, Sacred on earth, designed a saint above. Chastity and beauty, which were deadly foes, Live reconcilëd friends within her brow; And had she pity to conjoin with those, Then who had heard the plaints I utter now? For had she not been fair and thus unkind, My muse had slept, and none had known my mind.
Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes! How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn! For me wilt thou renew the withered rose, And clear my painful path of pointed thorn? Ah come, sweet nymph! in smiles and softness drest, Like the young hours that lead the tender year Enchantress come! and charm my cares to rest: Alas! the flatterer flies, and will not hear! A prey to fear, anxiety, and pain, Must I a sad existence still deplore? Lo! the flowers fade, but all the thorns remain, ‘For me the vernal garland blooms no more.’ Come then, ‘pale Misery’s love!’ be thou my cure, And I will bless thee, who though slow art sure.
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Track 1
How this picture is made
What a fractal is
A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. The large form and the small form are the same kind of thing. A poem can be drawn that way. The shape of the whole comes from the shape of the lines.
Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.
How the boundary is drawn
The number under the picture is the poem constant. It is read from the build of the lines: their length, how uneven they are, the size of the stanzas, the share of vowels, and the way the lines end. A new word moves the number when it changes that build. The same poem always gives the same number.
Drawn on its own, that number sits in a quiet part of the plane, and most poems would look like the same soft disk. So the number is carried outward along its own direction until it meets the edge of the Mandelbrot set, where the shape turns sharp. The picture is the Julia set of that meeting place.
Each point on the canvas is folded again and again by one small rule. Points that stay near the rule form the dark interior. Points that rush away become the coloured bands. The hue comes from the poem constant, and the brightest bands turn toward gold. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.
What the branching signifies
Branching draws the poem as a tree. Each turn follows a line, and every smaller branch repeats that pattern. A longer line reaches farther. The letters at the start of a line bend the next turn. A higher share of vowels opens the branches wider.
The trunk takes its colour from the poem constant and warms toward gold at the tips. When the poem has more than one stanza, gold forks leave the trunk. Each fork is a stanza beyond the first, up to three. The tree divides where the poem divides. One stanza remains a single trunk.