The Sick Rose
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Poem fractal
0.089 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.
−0.4529 − 1.3369i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.5205 − 1.2790i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Poet should not reason:
Let them sing!
Argument is treason—
Bells should ring.
Statements none, nor questions;
Gnomic words.
Spirit-cries, suggestions,
Like the birds.
He may use deduction
Who must preach;
He may praise instruction
Who must teach.
But the poet duly
Fills his part
When the song bursts truly
From his heart.
For no purpose springing;
For no pelf:
He must do the singing
For itself.
Not in lines austerely
Let him build;
Not the surface merely
Let him gild.
Fearless, uninvited,
Like a spring.
Opal-words, inlighted,
Let him sing.
As the leaf grows sunward
Song must grow;
As the stream flows onward
Song must flow.
Useless? Ay,—for measure;
Roses die,
But their breath gives pleasure—
God knows why!
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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