I grew a rose once more to please mine eyes. All things to aid it—dew, sun, wind, fair skies— Were kindly; and to shield it from despoil, I fenced it safely in with grateful toil. No other hand than mine shall pluck this flower, said I, And I was jealous of the bee that hovered nigh. It grew for days; I stood hour after hour To watch the slow unfolding of the flower, And then I did not leave its side at all, Lest some mischance my flower should befall. At last, oh joy! the central petals burst apart. It blossomed-but, alas! a worm was at its heart!
Behold! How fair it is to see in Spring, The frozen river once more thaw and run Under fresh wind, and warm, soft, flickering sun! Is it not good to dance and laugh and sing, To feel somewhile the lips of pleasure sting? Lo! now the fairness of a love well won; — But then things pass, and some day Spring is done; And, since we see there are no joys that cling, Would it not be far wiser to have none? Time's tide is dark and bitter with our tears; Why should we swell it with the greater pain Of fair gone things; a few, glad, golden years? Of one sad color let our days be spun, So we may live, nor weep to see life wane.
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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.