The moments passed as at a play, I had the wisdom love brings forth; I had my share of mother wit And yet for all that I could say, And though I had her praise for it, A cloud blown from the cut-throat north Suddenly hid love's moon away.
Believing every word I said I praised her body and her mind Till pride had made her eyes grow bright, And pleasure made her cheeks grow red, And vanity her footfall light, Yet we, for all that praise, could find Nothing but darkness overhead.
We sat as silent as a stone, We knew, though she'd not said a word, That even the best of love must die, And had been savagely undone Were it not that love upon the cry Of a most ridiculous little bird Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.
"Gold of butterflies, gold of bees, Gold of ragweeds and golden seas; Gold on gorses for kissing's sake, Which of these will you touch and take, Moirin, Moirin?"
Golden butterfly's not for me, I'll ha' none o' the golden bee: My heart of gold shall not beat nor break, Though I love the gorses for kissing's sake, Mother, Mother!
"Then rest you merry, through heat and cold, Sweet lips of cherry, sweet heart of gold; Yet Gold-Heart surely shall come some day To cry for gray wings to fly away, Moirin, Moirin!"
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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.