Poem fractal
0.072 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 Richard Jago
0.5797 + 0.2548i
Drawing the boundary…
0.5166 + 0.2206i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by Richard Jago
Once of forbidden fruit the mortal taste
Chang'd beauteous Eden to a dreary waste.
Here you may freely eat, secure the while
From latent poison, or insidious guile.
Yet O! cou'd I but happily infuse
Some secret charm into the sav'ry juice,
Of pow'r to tempt your gentle breast to share
With me the peaceful cot, and rural fare:
A diff'rent fate shou'd crown the blest device,
And change my Desart to a Paradise.
Vaine loves avaunt, infamous is your pleasure,
Your joy deceit:
Your jewels jests, and worthelesse trash your treasure,
Fooles common bait.
Your pallace is a prison that allureth
To sweet mishap, and rest that paine procureth,
Your garden griefe, hedg'd in with thornes of envie,
And stakes of strife:
Your Allyes errour graveled with Jelosie,
And cares of life.
Your bankes are seates enwrapt with shades of sadnes,
Your Arbours breed rough fittes of raging madnes.
Your beds are sowne with seedes of all iniquitie,
And poys'ning weeds:
Whose stalkes evill thoughts, whose leaves words full of vanity,
Whose fruite misdeedes.
Whose sap is sinne, whose force and operation,
To banish grace, and worke the soules damnation.
Your trees are dismall plantes of pyning corrosives,
Whose roote is ruth.
Whose barke is bale, whose tymber stubborne fantasyes:
Whose pyth untruth.
On which in liewe of birdes whose voyce delighteth:
Of guiltie conscience screeching note affrighteth.
Your coolest summer gales are scalding sighings,
Your shoures are teares,
Your sweetest smell the stench of sinfull livyng,
Your favoures feares,
Your gardener Sathan, all you reape is misery:
Your gaine remorse and losse of all felicitie.
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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