Poem fractal
0.033 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.
−0.0116 − 0.7876i
Drawing the boundary…
0.0120 − 0.8100i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Methought I walked a dismal place
Dim horrors all around;
The air was thick with many a face,
And black as night the ground.
I saw a monster come with speed,
Its face of grimmliest green,
On human beings used to feed,
Most dreadful to be seen.
I could not speak, I could not fly,
I fell down in that place,
I saw the monster's horrid eye
Come leering in my face!
Amidst my scarcely-stifled groans,
Amidst my moanings deep,
I heard a voice, "Wake! Mr. Jones,
You're screaming in your sleep!"
The green grass is bowing,
The morning wind is in it;
'T is a tune worth thy knowing,
Though it change every minute.
'T is a tune of the Spring;
Every year plays it over
To the robin on the wing,
And to the pausing lover.
O'er ten thousand, thousand acres,
Goes light the nimble zephyr;
The Flowers—tiny sect of Shakers—
Worship him ever.
Hark to the winning sound!
They summon thee, dearest,—
Saying, 'We have dressed for thee the ground,
Nor yet thou appearest.
'O hasten;' 't is our time,
Ere yet the red Summer
Scorch our delicate prime,
Loved of bee,—the tawny hummer.
'O pride of thy race!
Sad, in sooth, it were to ours,
If our brief tribe miss thy face,
We poor New England flowers.
'Fairest, choose the fairest members
Of our lithe society;
June's glories and September's
Show our love and piety.
'Thou shalt command us all,—
April's cowslip, summer's clover,
To the gentian in the fall,
Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover.
'O come, then, quickly come!
We are budding, we are blowing;
And the wind that we perfume
Sings a tune that's worth the knowing.'
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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