As pleasant a man as you would see, Native or foreign, to vouch I dare; His laugh was hoarse but full of glee, Indifferent when or where.
But most in graves the old man kept His singular jubilee; He roared at what most others wept; His life was a funeral glee.
He had no rival in his trade: He knew, one after another, All the village would need his axe and spade, And troubled himself no further.
His love and duty were never at strife— His charity looked to all; He seemed to think his lease on life Long as death held carnival.
He reasoned, "Well, 'tis nature's creed And man's chief want—is burial." The friend of the world in its sorest need, Could the world then spare him well?
Lily on liquid roses floating— So floats yon foam o'er pink champagne: Fain would I join such pleasant boating, And prove that ruby main, And float away on wine!
Those seas are dangerous (greybeards swear) Whose sea-beach is the goblet's brim; And true it is they drown Old Care— But what care we for him, So we but float on wine?
And true it is they cross in pain Who sober cross the Stygian ferry: But only make our Styx champagne, And we shall cross right merry, Floating away on wine!
Old Charon's self shall make him mellow, Then gaily row his boat from shore; While we and every jovial fellow, Hear unconcern'd the oar That dips itself in wine!
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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.