There is an awful quiet in the air, And the sad earth, with moist imploring eye, Looks wide and wakeful at the pondering sky, Like Patience slow subsiding to Despair. But see, the blue smoke as a voiceless prayer, Sole witness of a secret sacrifice, Unfolds its tardy wreaths, and multiplies Its soft chameleon breathings in the rare Capacious ether, —so it fades away. And nought is seen beneath the pendant blue, The undistinguishable waste of day. So have I dream’d! —oh, may the dream be true! That praying souls are purged from mortal hue, And grow as pure as He to whom they pray.
Nay, learned doctor, these fine leeches fresh From the pond’s edge my cause cannot remove: Alas, the sick disorder in my flesh Is deeper than your skill, is very love. And you, good friar, far liefer would I think Upon my dear, and dream him in your place, Than heed your ben'cites and heavenward sink With empty heart and noddle full of grace. Breathes but one mortal on the teeming globe Could minister to my soul’s or body’s needs— Physician minus physic, minus robe; Confessor minus Latin, minus beads. Yet should you bid me name him, I am dumb; For though you summon him, he would not come.
—
—
0:00
0:00
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.