Poem fractal
0.019 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.
−0.0973 − 0.5143i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.1048 − 0.4971i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
'Father, father, where are you going?
O do not walk so fast!
Speak, father, speak to your little boy,
Or else I shall be lost.'
The night was dark, no father was there,
The child was wet with dew;
The mire was deep, and the child did weep,
And away the vapour flew.
We walked together on the sand;
The white cliffs rose and shut out sight;
And then we rested, hand in hand,
Till evening faded into night.
'Twas the last time,—another day
To busier scenes would see me gone;
How should I tear my heart away,
And leave her loveless and alone?
Long time we sat, until the hour
Clanged on our thought, and then I heard
A low, too eloquent sigh of power,
And felt a quiver like a bird.
And marked the lithe form throb and thrill,
As quick the labouring pulses came;
Great God! how near we are to ill,
Girt by dark gulfs of sin and shame.
"Be glad! 'tis nature made you so;
Put off the yoke of childish fears."
"And are there, then, no jails of woe,
No dungeons of despair and tears? "
And so we rose without a word,
And homeward through the darkness went;
Dumb, though our inmost hearts were stirred,
And, save in fancy, innocent.
'Tis three years since. To-day I pressed
The little hand I knew of old:
She bore an infant at her breast,
And on her left the sacred gold.
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.