Poem fractal
0.013 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.
−0.1101 − 0.7026i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.1210 − 0.7104i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?
Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do 't?
Prithee, why so mute?
Quit, quit, for shame; this will not move:
This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
The devil take her!
East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon
They all must go who'd find her boon.
(La Belle Dame Sans Mercy!)
West o' the Moon, East o' the Sun,
Thither are many roads that run,
But the right road is the only one.
(La Belle Dame Sans Mercy!)
Her heart (woe's me!) is locked and cold-
A secret chamber filled with gold.
(La Belle Dame Sans Mercy!)
Straight as a lily-wand is she,
Her face is pale as lilies be,
Her brown hair floweth to her knee.
(La Belle Dame Sans Mercy!)
Her hands are idle hands and white,
They spin nor weave by day or night.
(La Belle Dame Sans Mercy!)
And yet those slender hands, God wot,
Have dug graves in her garden plot
'Neath tangles of forget-me-not.
(La Belle Dame Sans Mercy!)
There is no Saint in Paradise
Bends brows above such holy eyes.
(La Belle Dame Sans Mercy!)
And be her eyes or blue or grey,
There lives no man on earth to say,
Yet her eyes draw men's souls away
(La Belle Dame Sans Mercy!)
And who dare kiss her on the mouth
Knows no more hunger, no more drouth.
(La Belle Dame Sans Mercy!)
And whoso she hath kissed again
Is blest among all other men:
But Heaven's gate shuts him agen
And La Belle Dame Sans Mercy.
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.
Install V2Melody
Add a home-screen icon for quicker listening in a simple app window.