Soft falls the shower, the thunders cease! And see the messenger of peace Illumes the eastern skies; Blest sign of firm unchanging love! While others seek the cause to prove, That bids thy beauties rise.
My soul, content with humbler views, Well pleased admires thy varied hues, And can with joy behold Thy beauteous form, and wondering gaze Enraptured on thy mingled rays Of purple, green, and gold.
Enough for me to deem divine The hand that paints each glowing line; To think that thou art given A transient gleam of that bright place Where Beauty owns celestial grace, A faint display of Heaven!
Amyntas led me to a Grove, Where all the Trees did shade us; The Sun it self, though it had Strove, It could not have betray’d us: The place secur’d from humane Eyes, No other fear allows. But when the Winds that gently rise, Doe Kiss the yielding Boughs.
Down there we satt upon the Moss, And id begin to play A Thousand Amorous Tricks, to pass The heat of all the day. A many Kisses he did give: And I return’d the same Which made me willing to receive That which I dare not name.
His Charming Eyes no Aid requir’d To tell their softning Tale; On her that was already fir’d ’Twas easy to prevaile. He did but Kiss and Clasp me round, Whilst those his thoughts Exprest: And lay’d me gently on the Ground; Ah who can guess the rest?
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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.