A year ago, beloved! Who shall say What smiles and tears were ours a year ago? Last year my heart was fain its love to show; Then had I songs to sing, and prayers to pray, And dreams to dream, in dawns and twilights gray, — Dreams of love's heaven, that I came to know For passionate realities; and, lo! Realities turn back to dreams to-day.
O thou, my love, my saviour, living yet! I stand with folded hands before the gates, — Dark doors, whereof Death hath alone the key. So, with strained ear to iron gratings set, His term of bondage spent, some prisoner waits The word that, long delayed, shall make him free.
Dare all things for Love’s sake, since love is best. Of Fate ask nothing, rather by your deeds Rebuke it for its niggard ways unblest, And trust to Love to shield you in your needs. Remember in the shade of the new years Only what Love has given. This shall be Daily your dole, a safeguard from your tears, Outwitting change and Time’s inconstancy.
—Knock loudly at Love’s door. He is awake. Offer him roses. 'Tis his month of June. Watch all his ways. Do worship for his sake. Seek out his service. He shall serve you soon. Know this of Love, who fears not Fate’s disaster Answers for both and is of Time the master.
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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.