Poem fractal
0.013 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.
−0.1042 − 0.1495i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.1058 − 0.1626i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
Watch ye, and ward ye! a ship in sight,
And bearing down for Trebarra Height,
She folds her wings by that rocky strand:
Watch ye, and ward ye! a boat on land!
Hush! for they glide from yonder cave
To greet these strangers of the wave;
Wait! since they pace the seaward glen
With the measured tread of mourning men.
"Hold! masters, hold! ye tarry here,
What corse is laid on your solemn bier?
Yon minster-ground were a calmer grave
Than the roving bark, or the weedy wave!"
"Strong vows we made to our sister dead
To hew in fair France her narrow bed;
And her angry ghost will win no rest
If your Cornish earth lie on her breast."
They rend that pall in the glaring light:
By St. Michael of Carne! 'twas an aweful sight!
For those folded hands were meekly laid
On the silent breast of a shrouded maid.
"God speed, my masters, your mournful way!
Go, bury your dead where best ye may:
But the Norroway barks are over the deep,
So we watch and ward from our guarded steep."
Who comes with weapon? who comes with steed?
Ye may hear far off their clanking speed;
What knight in steel is thundering on?
Ye may know the voice of the grim Sir John.
"Saw ye my daughter, my Gwennah bright,
"Borne out for dead at the deep of night?"
"Too late! too late!" cried the warder pale,
"Lo! the full deck, and the rushing sail!"
They have roused that maid from her trance of sleep,
They have spread their sails to the roaring deep;
Watch ye and ward ye! with wind and tide,
Fitz-Walter hath won his Cornish bride.
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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