There is a void mysterious space Upon the full moon's face They call Serenity's dead sea; Changeless and blank it seems to be Amidst continuous change elsewhere, Untouched by tides or waves of air, Volcanic craters yawning round.
What breathless monsters harbour there, If any life at all may dare, Their iron lungs in silence bound, Silence for ever and profound!
The little boy with thinking eyes, Steals inquiringly to me:— Tell you more of that moon-sea I pointed out in last night's skies? But more no man can ever know, We must not think of it at all,— For if by sympathy I go Too near that breathless sea, dear elf, 'Tis very likely I shall fall Into breathlessness myself.
A bird, a song, — and a leafing shrub Sprayed with sun-balm from the sky; Near silver stream whose ripples gleam And a gray road's running by, Trailing away where summers play. Who could resist? Not I.
A book — a friend — and a happy heart On a beck'ning shady lane, Where verdant croft is pillow soft; The roving soul's domain! Ah, life is sweet where pagan feet May scamper or remain.
A bird — a song — and a leafing shrub! Then, vagabond, my thought Goes jaunting by where echoes sigh And bees their homes have wrought; Goes 'neath the blue, a-seeking you Where airs with love are fraught.
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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.