The false is fairer than the true. Behold Yon cloudy giant on the hills supine!— The figure of a falsehood that doth shine, Armored and helmeted, in such a gold As in the marts was never bought or sold,— Giant and armor the exalted sign Of shapes less glorious and tints less fine— Of forms of truth outmatched a thousand fold! Ah, Poesie! Thou charmer and thou cheat! Painting for eyes that fill with happy tears, In tints delusive, pictures that repeat Dull, earthly forms in heavenly atmospheres! How dost thou shame the truth, till it appears Less lovely far than thy divine deceit!
Sweet heart, that no taint of the throne or the stage Could touch with unclean transformation, or alter To the likeness of courtiers whose consciences falter At the smile or the frown, at the mirth or the rage, Of a master whom chance could inflame or assuage, Our Lady of Laughter, invoked in no psalter, Adored of no faithful that cringe and that palter, Praise be with thee yet from a hag-ridden age.
Our Lady of Pity thou wast: and to thee All England, whose sons are the sons of the sea, Gives thanks, and will hear not if history snarls When the name of the friend of her sailors is spoken; And thy lover she cannot but love—by the token That thy name was the last on the lips of King Charles.
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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.