Summer, be seen no more within this wood; Nor you, red Autumn, down its paths appear; Let no more the false mitrewort intrude Nor the dwarf cornel nor the gentian here; You too be absent, unavailing Spring, Nor let those thrushes that with pain conspire From out this wood their wild arpeggios fling, Shaking the nerves with memory and desire. Only that season which is no man’s friend, You, surly Winter, in this wood be found; Freeze up the year; with sleet these branches bend Though rasps the locust in the fields around. Now darken, sky! Now shrieking blizzard, blow!— Farewell, sweet bank; be blotted out with snow.
Wilt thou forsake me who in life's bright May Lent warmer lustre to the radiant morn; And even o'er summer scenes by tempests torn, Shed with illusive light the dewy ray Of pensive pleasure? Wilt thou, while the day Of saddening autumn closes, as I mourn In languid, hopeless sorrow, far away Bend thy soft step, and never more return?— Crush'd to the earth, by bitterest anguish press'd, From my faint eyes thy graceful form recedes; Thou canst not heal a heart like mine that bleeds; But, when in quiet earth that heart shall rest, Haply mayst thou one sorrowing vigil keep, Where Pity and Remembrance bend and weep!
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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.