Heart, have no pity on this house of bone: Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy. No man holds mortgage on it; it is your own; To give, to sell at auction, to destroy. When you are blind to moonlight on the bed, When you are deaf to gravel on the pane, Shall quavering caution from this house instead Cluck forth at summer mischief in the lane? All that delightful youth forbears to spend Molestful age inherits, and the ground Will have us; therefore, while we’re young, my friend — The Latin’s vulgar, but the advice is sound. Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here For age to invest in compromise and fear.
Vanguard of Liberty, ye Men of Kent, Ye Children of a Soil that doth advance It's haughty brow against the coast of France, Now is the time to prove your hardiment! To France be words of invitation sent! They from their Fields can see the countenance Of your fierce war, may ken the glittering lance. And hear you shouting forth your brave intent. Left single, in bold parley, Ye, of yore, Did from the Norman win a gallant wreath; Confirm'd the charters that were yours before;— No parleying now! In Britain is one breath; We all are with you now from Shore to Shore:— Ye Men of Kent, 'tis Victory or Death!
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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.