Love that is dead and buried, yesterday Out of his grave rose up before my face, No recognition in his look, no trace Of memory in his eyes dust-dimmed and grey. While I, remembering, found no word to say, But felt my quickened heart leap in its place; Caught afterglow thrown back from long set days, Caught echoes of all music passed away. Was this indeed to meet?—I mind me yet In youth we met when hope and love were quick, We parted with hope dead, but love alive: I mind me how we parted then heart sick, Remembering, loving, hopeless, weak to strive:— Was this to meet? Not so, we have not met.
Some hand, that never meant to do thee hurt, Has crush'd thee here between these pages pent; But thou hast left thine own fair monument, Thy wings gleam out and tell me what thou wert: Oh! that the memories, which survive us here, Where half as lovely as these wings of thine! Pure relics of a blameless life, that shine Now thou art gone. Our doom is ever near: The peril is beside us day by day; The book will close upon us, it may be, Just as we lift ourselves to soar away Upon the summer-airs. But, unlike thee, The closing book may stop our vital breath, Yet leave no lustre on our page of death.
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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.