Poem fractal
0.035 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.
by John Lydgate
0.3044 + 0.1853i
Drawing the boundary…
by Mary Lamb
0.3341 + 0.1677i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by John Lydgate
Tarye no lenger; toward thyn herytage
Hast on thy weye, and be of ryght good chere.
Go eche day onward on thy pylgrymage;
Thynke howe short tyme thou hast abyden here.
Thy place is bygged above the sterres clere,
Noon erthly palys wrought in so statly wyse.
Come on, my frend, my brother most entere!
For the I offered my blood in sacryfice.
by Mary Lamb
I saw a boy with eager eye
Open a book upon a stall,
And read as he’d devour it all;
Which when the stall-man did espy,
Soon to the boy I heard him call,
‘You, Sir, you never buy a book,
Therefore in one you shall not look.’
The boy passed slowly on, and with a sigh
He wished he never had been taught to read,
Then of the old churl’s books he should have had no need.
Of sufferings the poor have many,
Which never can the rich annoy.
I soon perceived another boy
Who looked as if he’d not had any
Food for that day at least, enjoy
The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.
This boy’s case, thought I, is surely harder,
Thus hungry longing, thus without a penny,
Beholding choice of dainty dressed meat;
No wonder if he wish he ne’er had learned to eat.
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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