Doubt no more that Oberon— Never doubt that Pan Lived, and played a reed, and ran After nymphs in a dark forest In the merry, credulous days,— Lived, and led a fairy band Over the indulgent land! Ah, for in this dourest, sorest Age man’s eye has looked upon, Death to fauns and death to fays, Still the dog-wood dares to raise— Healthy tree, with trunk and root— Ivory bowls that bear no fruit, And the starlings and the jays— Birds that cannot even sing— Dare to come again in spring!
Men say there is a stone shines green alway Through the long hours of the indifferent day, But blazes scarlet when the night draws on: I and my heart are like that changing stone.
All day I hide myself in lucent green. All the long hours of the indifferent day: But when the moon makes beautiful and clean The working world, I thrust my sheaths away. I cast aside my veil and bid it be, And let Love's scarlet flood transfigure me.
I am a chrysoberyl, and the night Is here, and I am changed. The changeless light Has touched me and transfigured; my own fire Beacons me to the place of heart's desire. I that was dark and dull am burning bright; I am a chrysoberyl, and 'tis night.
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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.