The midnight road, though young men tread unknowing, Harbouring some thought of heaven, or haven hoping, Yields peace and plenty at the end. Or is it peace, This busy jarring on the nerves yet no outbreak? And this is plenty, then, cloves and sweet oils, the bees’ honey, Enough kind food, enough kind speaking, A film of people moving, Their hands outstretched, to give and give? And now behind the screen are vixen voices, The midnight figures of a sulphurous brood Stepping in nightmare on a nightmare’s edges. Above them poise the swollen clouds That wait for breaking and that never break, The living sky, the faces of the stars.
How rich, O Lord! how fresh thy visits are! 'Twas but just now my bleak leaves hopeless hung Sullied with dust and mud; Each snarling blast shot through me, and did share Their youth, and beauty, cold showers nipt, and wrung Their spiciness and blood; But since thou didst in one sweet glance survey Their sad decays, I flourish, and once more Breath all perfumes, and spice; I smell a dew like myrrh, and all the day Wear in my bosom a full sun; such store Hath one beam from thy eyes. But, ah, my God! what fruit hast thou of this? What one poor leaf did ever I yet fall To wait upon thy wreath? Thus thou all day a thankless weed dost dress, And when th'hast done, a stench or fog is all The odor I bequeath.
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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.