Poem fractal
0.014 apart. A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.
This number is read from the build of the lines. The bright edge is that number, carried outward until the pattern repeats.
by William Byrd
−0.0218 + 0.1221i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.0150 + 0.1096i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by William Byrd
Come wofull Orpheus with thy charming Lyre
And tune my voyce unto thy skilfull wyre,
Some strange Cromatique Notes doe you devise
That best with mournefull accents sympathize,
Of sowrest Sharps and uncouth Flats make choise,
And Ile thereto compassionate my voyce.
Let us not think of our departed dead
As caught and cumbered in their graves of earth;
But think of death as of another birth,
As a new freedom for the wings outspread,
A new adventure waiting on ahead,
As a new joy of more ethereal mirth,
As a new world with friends of nobler worth,
Where all may taste a more immortal bread.
So, comrades, if you pass my grave sometime,
Pause long enough to breathe this little rhyme:
"Here now the dust of Edwin Markham lies,
But lo, he is not here: he is afar
On life's great errands under mightier skies,
And pressing on toward some melodious star."
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.
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.
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.
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