I slept and entered in "the blissful place Of the heart's heal, and deadly woundes' cure," Where Love is wingless found, and Faith is sure, And men and maidens look in God His face. There, where green leaves twine closely in a bower, St. Maurice and his Theban men mount guard, And on each breast I saw the martyr's sard Burn in the white cup of a lily-flower. O bold St. Maurice, is it good to rest Here amid asphodels and lilies sown? Or do you sometimes wish the old time back, When you were tried with sword and fire and wrack, Yet kept unhurt the bird within your breast, Whose voice with peace has somewhat tuneless grown?
Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes! How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn! For me wilt thou renew the withered rose, And clear my painful path of pointed thorn? Ah come, sweet nymph! in smiles and softness drest, Like the young hours that lead the tender year Enchantress come! and charm my cares to rest: Alas! the flatterer flies, and will not hear! A prey to fear, anxiety, and pain, Must I a sad existence still deplore? Lo! the flowers fade, but all the thorns remain, ‘For me the vernal garland blooms no more.’ Come then, ‘pale Misery’s love!’ be thou my cure, And I will bless thee, who though slow art sure.
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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.