Streak upon streak of turquoise in a sheet of heavy gray, A space of shining silver where the clouds are torn away, Stars growing pale in heaven o'erhead, and, lower down, A fringe of amber touches the roofs of the sleeping town. Shadowy wains and waggoners steal slow and softly by, There is no sudden swish of whips, there is no carter's cry. Upon the lips that cease from speech, the lids that fain would rest, A little wind comes whispering out of the lightless west. Lamps in the road are quenched and die because the day's begun, Although there's half an hour to wait ere men salute the sun. Steps of a homeless woman sound hollow down the street, Laugh of a man rings noisily where man and woman meet, And change with languid eyes and lips a fire of idle words, A cry of foolish laughter. Then silence; and the birds.
Though now thou hast failed and art fallen, despair not because of defeat, Though lost for a while be thy heaven and weary of earth be thy feet, For all will be beauty about thee hereafter through sorrowful years, And lovely the dews for thy chilling and ruby thy heart-drip of tears.
The eyes that had gazed from afar on a beauty that blinded the eyes Shall call forth its image for ever, its shadow in alien skies. The heart that had striven to beat in the heart of the Mighty too soon Shall still of that beating remember some errant and faltering tune.
For thou hast but fallen to gather the last of the secrets of power; The beauty that breathes in thy spirit shall shape of thy sorrow a flower, The pale bud of pity shall open the bloom of its tenderest rays, The heart of whose shining is bright with the light of the Ancient of Days.
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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.