The snow came down, unhasting and unresting, Fringed every naked twig in fine array Of crystal and white velvet, and its spray Hung from the eaves where swallows will be nesting In airs of April three months from to-day.
The snow came down, and made the noisy city A place of silence and white purity, Changed each gaunt post to some fantastic tree Full-fledged with silver flowers, and in its pity, Suited in the streets and highways like a sea.
London lay white and bridal in the morning, Wheels went upon their way without a jar, And every city-sound was faint and far. Now trodden down for every street-boy's scorning Lies the white wonder, dead as some dropped star.
The insect birds that suck nectareous juice From straightest tubes of curly-petaled flowers, Or catch the honey-dew that falls profuse Through the soft air, distil'd in viewless showers Whose colours seem the very souls of gems, Or parting rays of fading diadems:—
I have but seen their feathers,—that is all. As much as we can know of poets dead Or living; but the gilded plumes that fall Float on the earth, or in the wind dispread Go everywhere to beautify the breeze. Sweet wind, surcharged with treasures such as these,
I may not feel:—I never may behold The spark of life, that trimm’d in garb so bright That flying quintessence of ruby, gold, Mild emerald, and lucid chrysolite. Yet am I glad that life and joy were there, That the small creature was as blithe as fair.
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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.