Fair Star of Evening, Splendor of the West, Star of my Country! on the horizon's brink Thou hangest, stooping, as might seem, to sink On England's bosom; yet well pleas'd to rest, Meanwhile, and be to her a glorious crest Conspicuous to the Nations. Thou, I think, Should'st be my Country's emblem; and should'st wink, Bright Star! with laughter on her banners, drest In thy fresh beauty. There! that dusky spot Beneath thee, it is England; there it lies. Blessings be on you both! one hope, one lot, One life, one glory! I, with many a fear For my dear Country, many heartfelt sighs, Among Men who do not love her linger here.
On this kindly yellow day of mild low-travelling winter sun The stirless depths of the yews Are vague with misty blues: Across the spacious pathways stretching spires of shadow run, And the wind-gnawed walls of ancient brick are fired vermilion.
Two or three early sanguine finches tune Some tentative strains, to be enlarged by May or June: From a thrush or blackbird Comes now and then a word, While an enfeebled fountain somewhere within is heard.
Our footsteps wait awhile, Then draw beneath the pile, When an inner court outspreads As 'twere History's own asile, Where the now-visioned fountain its attenuate crystal sheds In passive lapse that seems to ignore the yon world's clamorous clutch, And lays an insistent numbness on the place, like a cold hand's touch.
And there swaggers the Shade of a straddling King, plumed, sworded, with sensual face, And lo, too, that of his Minister, at a bold self-centred pace: Sheer in the sun they pass; and thereupon all is still, Save the mindless fountain tinkling on with thin enfeebled will.
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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.