Poem fractal

Side by side

Random

0.031 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.

A sunny shaft did I behold

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

0.0663 − 0.6193i

Drawing the boundary…

A Riddle

by Anna Lætitia Barbauld

0.0746 − 0.6488i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

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

A sunny shaft did I behold

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A sunny shaft did I behold,
From sky to earth it slanted:
And poised therein a bird so bold—
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted!

He sank, he rose, he twinkled, he trolled
Within that shaft of sunny mist;
His eyes of fire, his beak of gold,
All else of amethyst!

And thus he sang: “Adieu! adieu!
Love's dreams prove seldom true.
The blossoms they make no delay:
The sparkling dew-drops will not stay.
Sweet month of May,
We must away;
Far, far away!
Today! today!”

A Riddle

by Anna Lætitia Barbauld

An unfortunate maid,
I by love was betray’d,
And wasted and pined by my grief;
To deep solitudes then,
Of rock, mountain and glen,
From the world I retired for relief.

Yet there by the sound
Of my voice I am found,
Though no footstep betrays where I tread;
The poet and lover,
My haunts to discover,
Still leave at the dawn their soft bed.

If the poet sublime
Address me in rime,
In rime I support conversation;
To the lover’s fond moan
I return groan for groan,
And by sympathy give consolation.

Though I’m apt, ’t is averr’d,
To love the last word,
Nor can I pretend ’t is a fiction;
I shall ne’er be so rude
On your talk to intrude
With anything like contradiction.

The fair damsels of old
By their mothers were told,
That maids should be seen and not heard;
The reverse is my case,
For you’ll ne’er see my face,
To my voice all my charms are transferr’d.

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