This Life which seemes so faire, Is like a Bubble blowen up in the Aire, By sporting Childrens Breath, Who chase it every where, And strive who can most Motion it bequeath: And though it sometime seeme of its owne Might (Like to an Eye of gold) to be fix'd there, And firme to hover in that emptie Hight, That only is because it is so light, But in that Pompe it doth not long appeare; For even when most admir'd, it in a Thought As swell'd from nothing, doth dissolve in nought.
When to sad Music silent you listen, And tears on those eyelids tremble like dew, Oh, then there dwells in those eyes as they glisten A sweet holy charm that mirth never knew. But when some lively strain resounding Lights up the sunshine of joy on that brow, Then the young reindeer o'er the hills bounding Was ne'er in its mirth so graceful as thou.
When on the skies at midnight thou gazest. A lustre so pure thy features then wear, That, when to some star that bright eye thou raisest, We feel 'tis thy home thou'rt looking for there. But when the word for the gay dance is given, So buoyant thy spirit, so heartfelt thy mirth, Oh then we exclaim, "Ne'er leave earth for heaven, "But linger still here, to make heaven of earth."
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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.