The smiling Spring comes in rejoicing, And surly Winter grimly flies; Now crystal clear are the falling waters, And bonnie blue are the sunny skies; Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning, The ev'ning gilds the ocean's swell; All creatures joy in the sun's returning, And I rejoice in my bonnie Bell.
The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer, And yellow Autumn presses near, Then in his turn comes gloomy Winter, Till smiling Spring again appear. Thus Seasons dancing, life advancing, Old Time and Nature their changes tell, But never ranging, still unchanging, I adore my bonnie Bell.
What did she give for her wedding-ring? All that a woman may! What did the gifts to the giver bring? Only an idol of clay. All the sweet dreams of her girlhood years, All that a heart could hold; All of her hopes and all of her fears, All of her smiles and all of her tears. For one little circle of gold.
Told she the world of the bitter cheat? Ah, no! With a smiling face She clothed her idol from head to feet With the garments of her grace. And no one knew of the tears she wept; Her griefs they were never guessed, For hid in her heart of hearts she kept Her thorns of woe. And so she slept With her hands across her breast.
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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.