Propped on a stick he viewed the August weald; Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls; A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stooked field, With sound of barking dogs and farmyard fowls.
And he'd come home again to find it more Desirable than ever it was before. How right it seemed that he should reach the span Of comfortable years allowed to man!
Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife, Safe with his wound, a citizen of life. He hobbled blithely through the garden gate, And thought: "Thank God they had to amputate!"
It ought to be lovely to be old to be full of the peace that comes of experience and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.
The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins in their old age.
Soothing, old people should be, like apples when one is tired of love. Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft stillness and satisfaction of autumn.
And a girl should say: It must be wonderful to live and grow old. Look at my mother, how rich and still she is! -
And a young man should think: By Jove my father has faced all weathers, but it's been a life!
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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.