Where Aegean cliffs with bristling menace front The treacherous splendour of that isley sea, Lighted by Troy's last shadow; where the first Hero kept watch and the last Mystery Shook with dark thunder. Hark! the battle brunt! A nation speaks, old Silences are burst.
'Tis not for lust of glory, no new throne This thunder and this lightning of our power Wakens up frantic echoes, not for these Our Cross with England's mingle, to be blown At Mammon's threshold. We but war when war Serves Liberty and Keeps a world at peace.
Who said that such an emprise could be vain? Were they not one with Christ, who fought and died? Let Ireland weep: but not for sorrow, weep That by her sons a land is sanctified, For Christ arisen, and angels once again Come back, like exile birds, and watch their sleep.
The little jade Buddha (his favours increase!) — He's soapy and bland, And he sits on his stand And he smiles and he smiles in an infinite peace; For he's old, and he knows that, whatever befall, There is nothing that matters, no, nothing at all.
The little jade Buddha (on us be his balm!) — The Wheel turneth just As it must, as it must, So he sits in an ageless, ineffable calm Where apples and empires may ripen or fall, But there's nothing that matters, no, nothing at all.
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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.