What would you do if I should give you roses Who gave you only lilies yesterday? If I should leave my idle pretty play Among my shaded sheltered lily-closes, And give you roses?
If in an hour I changed from girl to woman And gave you back your kisses, each for each — And chose, instead of music, passionate speech? Nay, but I will not, seeing Love's but human, Unveil the woman.
I'll keep my mystery and keep my lover; You who have hung with praise and dream my name, Being mere man, would find your praise half blame. If in my soul full measure, running over, You saw my love for you — not flowers but flame.
Black brother, think you life so sweet That you would live at any price? Does mere existence balance with The weight of your great sacrifice? Or can it be you fear the grave Enough to live and die a slave? O Brother! be it better said, When you are gone and tears are shed, That your death was the stepping stone Your children's children cross'd upon. Men have died that men might live: Look every foeman in the eye! If necessary, your life give For something, ere in vain you die.
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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.