Poem fractal
0.023 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.
−0.0549 − 0.0027i
Drawing the boundary…
by John Clare
−0.0771 + 0.0024i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
I have instructed you to follow me
What way I go;
The road is hard, and stony,—as I know;
Uphill it climbs, and from the crushing heat
No shelter will be found
Save in my shadow: wherefore follow me; the footprints of my feet
Will be distinct and clear;
However trodden on, they will not disappear.
And see ye not at last
How tall I am?—Even at noon I cast
A shadow like a forest far behind me on the ground.
by John Clare
Welcome, old Comrade! peeping once again;
Our meeting ’minds me of a pleasant hour:
Spring’s pencil pinks thee in that blushy stain,
And Summer glistens in thy tinty flower.
Hail, Beauty’s Gem! disdaining time nor place;
Carelessly creeping on the dunghill’s side;
Demeanour’s softness in thy crimpled face
Decks thee in beauties unattain’d by pride.
Hail, ’Venturer! once again that fearless here
Encampeth on the hoar hill’s sunny side;
Spring’s early messenger! thou’rt doubly dear;
And winter’s frost by thee is well supplied.
Now winter’s frowns shall cease their pelting rage,
But winter’s woes I need not tell to thee;
Far better luck thy visits well presage,
And be it thine and mine that luck to see.
Ah, may thy smiles confirm the hopes they tell
To see thee frost-bit I’d be griev’d at heart;
I meet thee happy, and I wish thee well,
Till ripening summer summons us to part.
Then like old mates, or two who’ve neighbours been,
We’ll part, in hopes to meet another year;
And o’er thy exit from this changing scene
We’ll mix our wishes in a tokening tear.
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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