Poem fractal
0.016 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.
0.2343 − 0.7325i
Drawing the boundary…
by A. A. Milne
0.2183 − 0.7350i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
What have I left to doe but dye,
Since Hope, my old Companion,
That train'd me from my Infancy,
My Friend, my Comforter is gone?
Oh fawning, false, deceiving Friend!
Accursed be thy Flatteries,
Which treacherously did intend
I should be wretched to be wise:
And so I am; for being taught
To know thy guiles, have only wrought
My greater misery and pain:
My misery is yet so great,
That, though I have found out the Cheat,
I wish for thee again in vain.
by A. A. Milne
One of the chairs is South America,
One of the chairs is a ship at sea,
One is a cage for a great big lion,
And one is a chair for Me.
The First Chair.
When I go up the Amazon,
I stop at night and fire a gun
To call my faithful band.
And Indians in twos and threes,
Come silently between the trees,
And wait for me to land.
And if I do not want to play
With any Indians to-day,
I simply wave my hand.
And then they turn and go away—
They always understand.
The Second Chair.
I'm a great big lion in my cage,
And I often frighten Nanny with a roar.
Then I hold her very tight, and
Tell her not to be so frightened—
And she doesn't be so frightened any more.
The Third Chair.
When I am in my ship, I see
The other ships go sailing by.
A sailor leans and calls to me
As his ship goes sailing by.
Across the sea he leans to me,
Above the winds I hear him cry:
"Is this the way to Round-the-World?"
He calls as he goes by.
The Fourth Chair.
Whenever I sit in a high chair
For breakfast or dinner or tea,
I try to pretend that it's my chair,
And that I am a baby of three.
Shall I go off to South America?
Shall I put out in my ship to sea?
Or get in my cage and be lions and tigers?
Or—shall I be only Me?
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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