He tore the curtains yesterday, And scratched the paper on the wall; Ma's rubbers, too, have gone astray— She says she left them in the hall; He tugged the table cloth and broke A fancy saucer and a cup; Though Bud and I think it a joke Ma scolds a lot about the pup.
The sofa pillows are a sight, The rugs are looking somewhat frayed, And there is ruin, left and right, That little Boston bull has made. He slept on Buddy's counterpane— Ma found him there when she woke up. I think it needless to explain She scolds a lot about the pup.
And yet he comes and licks her hand And sometimes climbs into her lap And there, Bud lets me understand, He very often takes his nap. And Bud and I have learned to know She wouldn't give the rascal up: She's really fond of him, although She scolds a lot about the pup.
Peace! what do tears avail? She lies all dumb and pale, And from her eye The spirit of lovely life is fading, And she must die! Why looks the lover wroth? the friend upbraiding? Reply, reply!
Hath she not dwelt too long ’Midst pain, and grief, and wrong? Then, why not die? Why suffer again her doom of sorrow, And hopeless lie? Why nurse the trembling dream until to-morrow? Reply, reply!
Death! Take her to thine arms, In all her stainless charms, And with her fly To heavenly haunts, where, clad in brightness, The Angels lie. Wilt bear her there, O Death! in all her whiteness? Reply, reply!
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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.