I've seen a dying eye
I've seen a dying eye
Run round and round a room—
In search of somewhat—as it seemed—
Then cloudier become—
And then—obscure with fog—
And then—be soldered down,
Without disclosing what it be,
'Twere blessed to have seen.
Poem fractal
0.016 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.
0.0619 − 0.6587i
Drawing the boundary…
0.0746 − 0.6488i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
I've seen a dying eye
Run round and round a room—
In search of somewhat—as it seemed—
Then cloudier become—
And then—obscure with fog—
And then—be soldered down,
Without disclosing what it be,
'Twere blessed to have seen.
An unfortunate maid,
I by love was betray’d,
And wasted and pined by my grief;
To deep solitudes then,
Of rock, mountain and glen,
From the world I retired for relief.
Yet there by the sound
Of my voice I am found,
Though no footstep betrays where I tread;
The poet and lover,
My haunts to discover,
Still leave at the dawn their soft bed.
If the poet sublime
Address me in rime,
In rime I support conversation;
To the lover’s fond moan
I return groan for groan,
And by sympathy give consolation.
Though I’m apt, ’t is averr’d,
To love the last word,
Nor can I pretend ’t is a fiction;
I shall ne’er be so rude
On your talk to intrude
With anything like contradiction.
The fair damsels of old
By their mothers were told,
That maids should be seen and not heard;
The reverse is my case,
For you’ll ne’er see my face,
To my voice all my charms are transferr’d.
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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