Poem fractal
0.039 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 W. H. Davies
−0.5704 − 0.4205i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.5995 − 0.4460i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by W. H. Davies
When primroses are out in Spring,
And small, blue violets come between;
When merry birds sing on boughs green,
And rills, as soon as born, must sing;
When butterflies will make side-leaps,
As though escaped from Nature's hand
Ere perfect quite; and bees will stand
Upon their heads in fragrant deeps;
When small clouds are so silvery white
Each seems a broken rimmèd moon—
When such things are, this world too soon,
For me, doth wear the veil of Night.
Pilate and Caïaphas
They have brought this thing to pass—
That a Christ the Father gave,
Should be guest within a grave.
Church and State have willed to last
This tyranny not over-past;
His dark southern Brows around
They a wreath of briars have bound,
In His dark despiséd Hands
Writ in sores their writing stands.
By strait starlit ways I creep,
Caring while the careless sleep,
Bearing balms, and flow’rs to crown
That poor Head the stone holds down,
Through some crack or crevice dim
I would reach my sweets to Him.
Easter suns they rise and set,
But that stone is steadfast yet:
Past my lifting ’tis but I
When ’tis lifted would be nigh.
I believe, whate’er they say,
The sun shall dance an Easter Day,
And I that through thick twilight grope
With balms of faith, and flow’rs of hope,
Shall lift mine eyes and see that stone
Stir and shake, if not be gone.
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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