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.
by J.M. Synge
−0.1748 − 0.0167i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.1732 − 0.0292i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by J.M. Synge
Beside a chapel I'd a room looked down,
Where all the women from the farms and town,
On Holy-days and Sundays used to pass
To marriages, and christenings, and to Mass.
Then I sat lonely watching score and score,
Till I turned jealous of the Lord next door. . .
Now by this window, where there's none can see,
The Lord God's jealous of yourself and me.
Then be it so and let us part,
Since love like mine has fail'd to move thee;
But do not think this constant heart
Can ever cease, ingrate, to love thee.
No—spite of all thy cold disdain,
I'll bless the hour when first I met thee,
And rather bear whole years of pain
Than e'en for one short hour forget thee.
Forget thee! No.
Still Mem'ry now my only friend,
Shall with her soothing art endeavour
My present anguish to suspend,
By painting pleasures lost for ever.
She shall the happy hours renew.
When full of hope and smiles I met thee,
And little thought the day to view
When thou wouldst wish me to forget thee.
Forget thee! No.
Yet, have I liv'd to view that day,
To mourn my past destructive blindness,
To see now turn'd with scorn away
Those eyes once fill'd with answering kindness.
But go—farewell and be thou blest,
If thoughts of what I feel will let thee:
Yet, though thy Image kills my rest,
'Twere greater anguish to forget thee.
Forget thee! No.
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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