There is in my old picture-book A page at which I like to look, Where knights and squires come riding down The cobbles of some steep old town, And ladies from beneath the eaves Flutter their bravest handkerchiefs, Or, smiling proudly, toss down gages . . . But that was in the Middle Ages. It wouldn't happen now; but still, Whenever I look up the hill Where, dark against the green and blue, The firs come marching, two by two, I wonder if perhaps I might See suddenly a shining knight Winding his way from blue to green— Exactly as it would have been Those many, many years ago. . . .
Cold as the breath of winds that blow To silver shot descending snow, Lucasta sigh't; when she did close The world in frosty chaines! And then a frowne to rubies frose The blood boyl'd in our veines: Yet cooled not the heat her sphere Of beauties first had kindled there.
Then mov'd, and with a suddaine flame Impatient to melt all againe, Straight from her eyes she lightning hurl'd, And earth in ashes mournes; The sun his blaze denies the world, And in her luster burnes: Yet warmed not the hearts, her nice Disdaine had first congeal'd to ice.
And now her teares nor griev'd desire Can quench this raging, pleasing fire; Fate but one way allowes; behold Her smiles' divinity! They fann'd this heat, and thaw'd that cold, So fram'd up a new sky. Thus earth, from flames and ice repreev'd, E're since hath in her sun-shine liv'd.
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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.