When Sorrow moves with silent tread Around some mortal's buried dust, And muses on the mouldering dead Who sleep beneath their crumbling bust, Though all unheard and all unknown The name on that sepulchral stone, She looks on its recording line, And whispers kindly, "Peace be thine!"
O Lady! me thou knowest not, And what I am, or am to be; The pain and pleasure of my lot Are nought, and must be nought, to thee; Thou seest not my hopes and fears; Yet thou, perhaps, in other years, Wilt look on this recording line, And whisper kindly, "Peace be thine!"
The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim. Th' unwearied Sun from day to day Does his Creator's power display; And publishes to every land The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail. The Moon takes up the wondrous tale; And nightly to the listening Earth Repeats the story of her birth: Whilst all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all Move round the dark terrestrial ball; What though nor real voice nor sound Amidst their radiant orbs be found? In Reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice; For ever singing as they shine, 'The Hand that made us is divine.'
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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.