Fayre eyes, the myrrour of my mazed hart, what wondrous vertue is contaynd in you, the which both lyfe and death forth from you dart into the obiect of your mighty view? For when ye mildly looke with louely hew, then is my soule with life and loue inspired but when ye lowre, or looke on me askew, then doe I die, as one with lightning fyred. But since that lyfe is more then death desyred, looke euer louely, as becomes you best, that your bright beams of my weak eies admyred, may kindle liuing fire within my brest. Such life should be the honor of your light, such death the sad ensample of your might.
You ask my love. What shall my love then be? A hope, an aspiration, a desire? The soul’s eternal charter writ in fire Upon the earth, the heavens, and the sea? You ask my love. The carnal mystery Of a soft hand, of finger-tips that press, Of eyes that kindle and of lips that kiss, Of sweet things known to thee and only thee? You ask my love. What love can be more sweet Than hope or pleasure? Yet we love in vain. The soul is more than joy, the life than meat. The sweetest love of all were love in pain, And that I will not give. So let it be. —Nay, give me any love, so it be love of thee.
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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.