Poem fractal

Side by side

Random

0.026 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.

Phillis is my only Joy

by Sir Charles Sedley

−0.0170 − 0.6789i

Drawing the boundary…

Moonlight

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

−0.0381 − 0.6629i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

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

Phillis is my only Joy

by Sir Charles Sedley

Phillis is my only Joy,
Faithless as the Winds or Seas;
Sometimes coming, sometimes coy,
Yet she never fails to please;
If with a Frown
I am cast down,
Phillis smiling,
And beguiling,
Makes me happier than before.

Tho', alas, too late I find,
Nothing can her Fancy fix;
Yet the Moment she is kind,
I forgive her all her Tricks;
Which, tho' I see,
I can't get free;
She deceiving,
I believing;
What need Lovers wish for more?

Moonlight

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As a pale phantom with a lamp
Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud
In all the splendor of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more
Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed. One mass of shade,
The elm-trees drop their curtains down;
By palace, park, and colonnade
I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground beneath my feet
Is clothed with a diviner air;
White marble paves the silent street
And glimmers in the empty square.

Illusion! Underneath there lies
The common life of every day;
Only the spirit glorifies
With its own tints the sober gray.

In vain we look, in vain uplift
Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind,
We see but what we have the gift
Of seeing; what we bring we find.

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