Poem fractal
0.010 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.
−0.1914 + 0.0961i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.1944 + 0.0868i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Seal up her Eyes, O sleep, but flow
Mild, as her Manners, too and fro:
Slide soft into her, that yet shee
May receive no wound from thee.
And ye, present her thoughts, O Dreams,
With hushing winds, and purling streams
Whiles hovering silence sits without,
Carefull to keep disturbance out.
Thus seize her, Sleep, thus her again resign,
So what was Heavens gift, wee'l reckon thine.
Let me lean hard upon the Eternal Breast:
In all earth's devious ways I sought for rest
And found it not. I will be strong, said I,
And lean upon myself. I will not cry
And importune all heaven with my complaint.
But now my strength fails, and I fall, I faint:
Let me lean hard.
Let me lean hard upon the unfailing Arm.
I said I will walk on, I fear no harm,
The spark divine within my soul will show
The upward pathway where my feet should go.
But now the heights to which I most aspire
Are lost in clouds. I stumble and I tire:
Let me lean hard.
Let me lean harder yet. That swerveless force
Which speeds the solar systems on their course
Can take, unfelt, the burden of my woe,
Which bears me to the dust and hurts me so.
I thought my strength enough for any fate,
But lo! I sink beneath my sorrow's weight:
Let me lean hard.
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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