Poem fractal

Side by side

Random

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.

Amid the Roses

by Alice Dunbar Nelson

−0.4276 + 0.2970i

Drawing the boundary…

To Germany

by Charles Sorley

−0.4112 + 0.2638i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.

Amid the Roses

by Alice Dunbar Nelson

There is tropical warmth and languorous life
Where the roses lie
In a tempting drift
Of pink and red and golden light
Untouched as yet by the pruning knife.
And the still, warm life of the roses fair
That whisper "Come,"
With promises
Of sweet caresses, close and pure
Has a thorny whiff in the perfumed air.
There are thorns and love in the roses' bed,
And Satan too
Must linger there;
So Satan's wiles and the conscience stings,
Must now abide — the roses are dead.

To Germany

by Charles Sorley

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other's dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

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