Poem fractal
0.048 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.
−0.0794 + 0.8900i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.0762 + 0.8425i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
The rain is falling sluggishly, the night is sad and still
My weary soul is waning with thoughts of woe and ill;
The earth is cold beneath me, the heavens are black with fear;
My sleepless heart is calling thee: Oh! would that thou wert here!
Oh! would that thou wert here, with thy brow so calm and high,
Thy smile of meek affection, thy undeceiving eye;
By the worm of remorse, by the hell of a peaceless home,
By the madness of suspense, beloved, haste and come!
Says Tom to Jack, 'Tis very odd,
These representatives of God,
In colour, way of life, and evil,
Should be so very like the devil'.
Jack, understand, was one of those
Who mould religion in the nose,
A red-hot Methodist; his face
Was full of puritanic grace,
His loose lank hair, his slow gradation,
Declared a late regeneration;
Among the daughters long renowned.
For standing upon holy ground;
Never in carnal battle beat,
Though sometimes forced to a retreat.
But Catcott, hero as he is,
Knight of incomparable phiz,
When pliant doxy seems to yield,
Courageously forsakes the field.
Jack, or to write more gravely, John,
Through hills of Wesley's works had gone;
Could sing one hundred hymns by rote,
Hymns which will sanctify the throat:
But some indeed composed so oddly,
You’d swear 'twas bawdy songs made godly.
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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