The Death Bed and Written After a Snow-Storm — compare fractals

Side by side

0.026 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.

−0.3256 − 0.7224i

−0.3294 − 0.6968i

The poems

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

We watch'd her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seem'd to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied—
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed—she had
Another morn than ours.

Come children dear, and look around;
Behold how soft and light
The silent snow has clad the ground
In robes of purest white.

The trees seem deck'd by fairy hand,
Nor need their native green;
And every breeze appears to stand,
All hush'd, to view the scene.

You wonder how the snows were made
That dance upon the air,
As if from purer worlds they stray'd,
So lightly and so fair.

Perhaps they are the summer flowers
In northern stars that bloom,
Wafted away from icy bowers
To cheer our winter's gloom.

Perhaps they're feathers of a race
Of birds that live away,
In some cold dreary wintry place,
Far from the sun's warm ray.

And clouds, perhaps, are downy beds
On which the winds repose;
Who, when they rouse their slumb'ring heads,
Shake down the feath'ry snows.

But see, my darlings, while we stay
And gaze with fond delight,
The fairy scene soon fades away,
And mocks our raptur'd sight.

And let this fleeting vision teach
A truth you soon must know—
That all the joys we here can reach
Are transient as the snow.