Poem fractal

Side by side

Random

0.021 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.

Nurse's Song

by William Blake

0.0800 − 0.0949i

Drawing the boundary…

Man, the Creator!

by James Oppenheim

0.0966 − 0.1085i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

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

Nurse's Song

by William Blake

When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And whisperings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Your spring and your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.

Man, the Creator!

by James Oppenheim

Man, the Creator!
But why be man-the-anything?

Man's a dubious venture:
A split-off Question from the Unquestioning:
He and Nature he knows as "I" and " It."

This sundering: what has he gained by it?
He has edged out on a spring-board over the abyss…

I envy the spider:
Her fat belly spins silk for scooping nets, so she may eat,
And bags for her eggs, so she may procreate:
Her life's a tiny river that runs smooth and without question
Emptying into eggs:
As a single drop of blood in my wrist throbs one with my heart
So she with Nature.

Has she a reason for living?
No: but neither a reason for not-living.

But I, I have a hundred reasons for hating life:
For I hurl questions at its pains, failures, botches and funerals,
And it gives no answers...

Or thus it answers, my echo:
Emptiness!
Nothingness!

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