Poem fractal
0.035 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.
0.0933 − 0.7592i
Drawing the boundary…
by Thomas Hardy
0.0612 − 0.7720i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Pleasant companion Sleep, refrain
While meditation tells
How deep in England once again
A cherished friendship dwells.
All waves that round this island go
Now closely us combine,
Since none but English rivers flow
Between his door and mine.
Now I with him may once again
Our ancient quest begin;
By speech the working of his brain
To me may enter in.
Nor needs there speech if glance meet glance,
On walks or at the play,
Or anywhere I by good chance
May meet him any day.
by Thomas Hardy
When, soul in soul reflected,
We breathed an æthered air,
When we neglected
All things elsewhere,
And left the friendly friendless
To keep our love aglow,
We deemed it endless
—We did not know!
When panting passion-goaded,
We planned to hie away,
But, unforeboded,
All the long day
The storm so pierced and pattered
That none could up and go,
Our lives seemed shattered…
—We did not know!
When I found you helpless lying,
And you waived my long misprise,
And swore me, dying,
In phantom-guise
To wing to me when grieving,
And touch away my woe,
We kissed, believing
—We did not know!
But though, your powers outreckoning,
You tarry dead and dumb,
Or scorn my beckoning,
And will not come:
And I say, "Why thus inanely
Brood on her memory so!"
I say it vainly—
I feel and know!
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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