My Ladies presence makes the roses red Because to see her lips they blush for shame The lilies leaues for envy pale became And her white hands in them this envy bred
The marygold abroad the leaues did spread Because the suns and her power is the same The violet of purple coloure came Dy'd with the bloud she made my heart to shed
In briefe all flowers from her theyre vertue take From her sweet breath theyre sweet smells doe proceed The liuing heate which her eybeames doe make Warmeth the ground and quickneth the seede The rayne wherewith she watereth these flowers Falls from myne eyes which she dissolues in shewers.
Thy soul within such silent pomp did keep, As if humanity were lull'd asleep; So gentle was thy pilgrimage beneath, Time's unheard feet scarce make less noise, Or the soft journey which a planet goes: Life seem'd all calm as its last breath. A still tranquillity so hush'd thy breast, As if some Halcyon were its guest, And there had built her nest; It hardly now enjoys a greater rest.
—
—
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.