Poem fractal
0.034 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.
−0.0074 + 0.0891i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.0085 + 0.0547i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Among the worst of men that ever lived
However we did seriously attend
A little space we let our thoughts ascend
Experienced our religion & confessed
'Twas good for us to be there—be anywhere
Then to a heap of apples we addressed
& cleared the topmost rider sine care
But our Icarian thoughts returned to ground
And we went on to heaven the long way round.
Is it worth while that we jostle a brother,
Bearing his load on the rough road of life?
Is it worth while that we jeer at each other
In blackness of heart?—that we war to the knife?
God pity us all in our pitiful strife.
God pity us all as we jostle each other;
God pardon us all for the triumphs we feel
When a fellow goes down 'neath his load on the heather,
Pierced to the heart: words are keener than steel,
And mightier far for woe than for weal.
Were it not well, in this brief little journey
On over the isthmus, down into the tide,
We give him a fish instead of a serpent,
Ere folding the hands to be and abide
Forever and aye in dust at his side?
Look at the roses saluting each other;
Look at the herds all at peace on the plain—
Man, and man only, makes war on his brother,
And dotes in his heart on his peril and pain—
Shamed by the brutes that go down on the plain.
Is it worth while that we battle to humble
Some poor fellow down into the dust?
God pity us all! Time too soon will tumble
All of us together, like leaves in a gust,
Humbled, indeed, down into the dust.
Why should we envy a moment of pleasure
Some poor fellow-mortal has wrung from it all?
Oh! could you look into his life's broken measure—
Look at the dregs—at the wormwood and gall—
Look at his heart hung with crape like a pall;
Look at the skeletons down by his hearthstone;
Look at his cares in their merciless sway,
I know you would go and say tenderly, lowly,
Brother—my brother, for aye and for aye,
Lo! Lethe is washing the blackness away.
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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