Alone! Alone! No beacon, far or near! No chart, no compass, and no anchor stay! Like melting fog, the mirage melts away In all−surrounding darkness, void and clear, Drifting, I spread vain hands, and vainly peer, And vainly call for pilot — weep and pray; Beyond these limits not the faintest ray Shows the distant coast whereto the lost may steer.
O what is Life, if we must hold it thus, As wind−blown sparks hold momentary fire? What are these gifts without the larger boon? O what is Art, or Wealth, or Fame to us Who scarce have time to know what we desire? O what is Love, if we must part so soon?
With emptied, outstretched hands and downcast eyes, Love walks alone and walks uncomforted; And if the aureole gleam about his head, I hardly know; his lips are full of sighs, And they who question him gain no replies. Only to me he saith, "My feet have bled From many a thorny path; and I have said Such grievous words as make the swift tears rise.
"But never since men knew my awful name Have I walked thus by such precipitous ways, Seen such deep darkness, and illusive flame Which leaves no track. O great ancestral days! For I am he whose mighty power and peace Crowned Helen, consecrated Beatrice."
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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.