There is in Egypt by the ancient Nile A temple of imperishable stone, Stupendous, columned, hieroglyphed, and known To all the world as Faith's supremest shrine. Half in debris it stands, a granite pile Gigantic, stayed midway in resurrection, An awe, an inspiration, a dejection To all who would the cryptic past divine. The god of it was Ammon, and a throng Of worshippers from Thebes the royal-gated For ever at its fervid pylons waited While priests poured ever a prophetic song. And yet this Ammon, who gave Egypt laws, Is not—and is forgot—and never was!
Thou art not so black as my heart, Nor half so brittle as her heart, thou art; What would'st thou say? shall both our properties by thee be spoke, —Nothing more endless, nothing sooner broke?
Marriage rings are not of this stuff; Oh, why should ought less precious, or less tough Figure our loves? except in thy name thou have bid it say, —I'm cheap, and nought but fashion; fling me away.
Yet stay with me since thou art come, Circle this finger's top, which didst her thumb; Be justly proud, and gladly safe, that thou dost dwell with me, She that, O! broke her faith, would soon break thee.
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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.