She sits in the tawny vapour That the Thames-side lanes have uprolled, Behind whose webby fold-on-fold Like a waning taper The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger's knock cracks smartly, Flashed news in her hand Of meaning it dazes to understand Though shaped so shortly: He—he has fallen—in the far South Land…
'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker, The postman nears and goes: A letter is brought whose lines disclose By the firelight flicker His hand, whom the worm now knows:
Fresh—firm—penned in highest feather— Page-full of his hoped return, And of home-planned jaunts of brake and burn In the summer weather, And of new love that they would learn.
Farewell, Life! My senses swim, And the world is growing dim; Thronging shadows cloud the light, Like the advent of the night,— Colder, colder, colder still, Upward steals a vapor chill— Strong the earthy odor grows— I smell the mould above the rose!
Welcome, Life! the Spirit strives! Strength returns, and hope revives; Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn Fly like shadows at the morn,— O'er the earth there comes a bloom— Sunny light for sullen gloom, Warm perfume for vapor cold— smell the rose above the mould!
February 1845
—
—
0:00
0:00
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.