Winds! what have ye gather'd from Afric's strand, As ye swept the breadth of that fragrant land? The breath of the spice-bud, the rich perfume Of balm and of gum and of flowret's bloom? "We have gather'd nought, save a pagan prayer, And the stifling sigh of the heart's despair."
Waves! what have ye heard on that ancient coast Where Egypt the might of her fame did boast, Where the statue of Memnon saluted the morn, And the pyramids tower in their giant scorn? "We have heard the curse of the slave-ship's crew, And the shriek of the chain'd as the shores withdrew."
Stars! what have ye seen with the glancing eye From your burning thrones in the sapphire-sky? "We have mark'd young hope as it brightly glow'd, On Afric's breast whence the blood-drop flow'd, And we chanted the hymn which we sang at first, When the sun from the midnight of Chaos burst."
As yet thy griefs have been but summer showers, Thy greatest ills but crumpled leaves of flowers; Still, tho' thus blest thy former hours have been, Thy happiest days, I trust, thou hast not seen, But still more blest, as runs the sand of life, Than child or sister was, will be the wife.
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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.