Poem fractal
0.017 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.
−0.4538 − 0.6367i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.4540 − 0.6537i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
She sweeps with many-colored Brooms —
And leaves the Shreds behind —
Oh Housewife in the Evening West —
Come back, and dust the Pond!
You dropped a Purple Ravelling in —
You dropped an Amber thread —
And how you’ve littered all the East
With duds of Emerald!
And still, she plies her spotted Brooms,
And still the Aprons fly,
Till Brooms fade softly into stars —
And then I come away —
Cold blew the freezing northern blast,
And winter sternly frowned;
The flaky snow fell thick and fast,
And clad the fields around.
Forced by the storm’s relentless power,
Emboldened by despair,
A shivering redbreast sought my door,
Some friendly warmth to share.
‘Welcome, sweet bird!’ I fondly cried,
‘No danger need’st thou fear,
Secure with me thou may’st abide,
Till warmer suns appear.
‘And when mild spring comes smiling on,
And bids the fields look gay,
Thou, with thy sweet, thy grateful song,
My kindness shalt repay.’
Mistaken thought! — But how shall I
The mournful truth display?
An envious cat, with jealous eye,
Had marked him as her prey.
Remorseless wretch! — her cruel jaws
Soon sealed her victim’s doom,
While I in silence mourn his loss,
And weep o’er robin’s tomb.
So, oft in life’s uneven way,
Some stroke may intervene;
Sweep all our fancied joys away,
And change the flattering scene.
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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