Lord, shall I find it in Thy Holy Church, Or must I give it up as something dead, Forever lost, no matter where I search, Like dinosaurs within their ancient bed? I found it not in years of Unbelief, In science stirring life like budding trees, In Revolution like a dazzling thief— Oh, shall I find it on my bended knees?
But what is Truth? So Pilate asked Thee, Lord, So long ago when Thou wert manifest, As the Eternal and Incarnate Word, Chosen of God and by Him singly blest: In this vast world of lies and hate and greed, Upon my knees, Oh Lord, for Truth I plead.
Peace be around thee, wherever thou rov'st; May life be for thee one summer's day, And all that thou wishest and all that thou lov'st Come smiling around thy sunny way! If sorrow e'er this calm should break, May even thy tears pass off so lightly, Like spring-showers, they'll only make The smiles, that follow shine more brightly.
May Time who sheds his blight o'er all And daily dooms some joy to death O'er thee let years so gently fall, They shall not crush one flower beneath. As half in shade and half in sun This world along its path advances. May that side the sun's upon Be all that e'er shall meet thy glances!
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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.