Let's leave off our labour, and now let's go play, For this is our time to be jolly; Our plagues and our plaguers are both fled away, To nourish our griefs is but folly. He that won't drink and sing, Is a Traytor to's King, And so's he that does not look twenty years younger; We'l look blith and trim, With rejoycing at him That is the restorer, and will be the Prolonger, Of all our felicity and health, The joy of our hearts, and increase of our wealth, 'Tis he brings our trading, our trading brings riches, Our riches brings honors, at which every mind itches, And our riches bring sack, and our sack brings us joy, And our joy makes us leap, and sing Vive le Roy.
The rain is falling sluggishly, the night is sad and still My weary soul is waning with thoughts of woe and ill; The earth is cold beneath me, the heavens are black with fear; My sleepless heart is calling thee: Oh! would that thou wert here!
Oh! would that thou wert here, with thy brow so calm and high, Thy smile of meek affection, thy undeceiving eye; By the worm of remorse, by the hell of a peaceless home, By the madness of suspense, beloved, haste and come!
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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.