Within a primrose wood I lay content Upon a certain blithe blue day of spring, And, ever near, my lover came or went And gathering violets ever did she sing.
So fair she was I laughed for love, and cried "Still can I see how yesterday you stood, Your whole fair frame rejoicing in its pride And lovelier than the whole spring-lovely wood!"
Ah then she paused and coming where I sat Smiled, and with one dear hand upon my head "O love, my love, may you remember that When I am no more beautiful" she said.
If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill Be a scrub in the valley—but be The best little scrub by the side of the rill; Be a bush if you can't be a tree.
If you can't be a bush be a bit of the grass, And some highway some happier make; If you can't be a muskie then just be a bass— But the liveliest bass in the lake!
We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew, There's something for all of us here. There's big work to do and there's lesser to do, And the task we must do is the near.
If you can't be a highway then just be a trail, If you can't be the sun be a star; It isn't by size that you win or you fail— Be the best of whatever you are!
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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.