When Mary Goes Walking
When Mary goes walking
The Autumn winds blow,
The poplars they curtsey,
The larches bend low,
The oaks and the beeches
Their gold they fling down.
To make her a carpet,
To make her a crown!
Poem fractal
0.037 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.
−0.6681 − 0.9778i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.6308 − 0.9782i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
When Mary goes walking
The Autumn winds blow,
The poplars they curtsey,
The larches bend low,
The oaks and the beeches
Their gold they fling down.
To make her a carpet,
To make her a crown!
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,—
The Lord God made them all.
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,—
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
The purple-headed mountain,
The river running by,
The morning, and the sunset
That lighteth up the sky,
The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,—
He made them, every one.
The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water
We gather every day,—
He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who hath made all things well.
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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