Pilate and Caïaphas They have brought this thing to pass— That a Christ the Father gave, Should be guest within a grave.
Church and State have willed to last This tyranny not over-past; His dark southern Brows around They a wreath of briars have bound, In His dark despiséd Hands Writ in sores their writing stands.
By strait starlit ways I creep, Caring while the careless sleep, Bearing balms, and flow’rs to crown That poor Head the stone holds down, Through some crack or crevice dim I would reach my sweets to Him.
Easter suns they rise and set, But that stone is steadfast yet: Past my lifting ’tis but I When ’tis lifted would be nigh. I believe, whate’er they say, The sun shall dance an Easter Day, And I that through thick twilight grope With balms of faith, and flow’rs of hope, Shall lift mine eyes and see that stone Stir and shake, if not be gone.
By woodland belt, by ocean bar, The full south breeze our foreheads fann'd, And lightly roll'd round moon and star Low music from the Magic Land.
By ocean bar, by woodland belt, More fragrant grew the glowing night, While, faint thro' dark blue air, we felt The breath of some unnamed Delight;
Till Morning rose, and smote from far Her elfin harps. Then sea, and sky, And woodland belt, and ocean bar, To one sweet note, sigh'd Italy!
—
—
0:00
0:00
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.