I'm desperately deep in love. My heart, Transfixed by Cupid's savage little dart, Goes pit-a-pat one million times per day. My hair's a Whig—'twill shortly turn to Grey. Appalled, at night, from dreary dreams I start. My health is wrecked, beyond the power of art. I can't drink anything except some whey, I'm credibly assured I've shrunk away To half my size—yet I've encreased in sighs, Which puzzles me; I daren't munch potatoes— On pastry I may banquet—with my eyes, But not my stomach, which is dead as Plato's. Now what, dear Eglantine, does all this prove, If not that I am dying fast of love?
Hearken not, friend, for the resounding din That did the Poet's verses once acclaim: We are but gleaners in the field of fame, Whence the main harvest hath been gathered in. The sheaves of glory you are fain to win, Long since were stored round many a household name, The reapers of the Past, who timely came, And brought to end what none can now begin. Yet, in the stubbles of renown, 'tis right To stoop and gather the remaining ears, And carry homeward in the waning light What hath been left us by our happier peers; So that, befall what may, we be not quite Famished of honour in the far-off years.
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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.