Who fancied what a pretty sight This Rock would be if edged around With living Snowdrops? circlet bright! How glorious to this Orchard ground! Who loved the little Rock, and set Upon its Head this Coronet?
Was it the humour of a Child? Or rather of some love-sick Maid, Whose brows, the day that she was styled The Shepherd Queen, were thus arrayed? Of Man mature, or Matron sage? Or old Man toying with his age?
I ask'd—'twas whisper'd, The device To each or all might well belong. It is the Spirit of Paradise That prompts such work, a Spirit strong, That gives to all the self-same bent Where life is wise and innocent.
If you would happy company win, Dangle a palm-nut from a tree, Idly in green to sway and spin, Its snow-pulped kernel for bait; and see, A nimble titmouse enter in.
Out of earth's vast unknown of air, Out of all summer, from wave to wave, He'll perch, and prank his feathers fair, Jangle a glass-clear wildering stave, And take his commons there —
This tiny son of life; this spright, By momentary Human sought, Plume will his wing in the dappling light, Clash timbrel shrill and gay — And into time's enormous nought, Sweet-fed, will flit away.
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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.