Lost
I lost a world the other day.
Has anybody found?
You'll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.
A rich man might not notice it;
Yet to my frugal eye
Of more esteem than ducats.
Oh, find it, sir, for me!
Poem fractal
0.053 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.
0.5810 − 0.9430i
Drawing the boundary…
0.5778 − 0.8898i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
I lost a world the other day.
Has anybody found?
You'll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.
A rich man might not notice it;
Yet to my frugal eye
Of more esteem than ducats.
Oh, find it, sir, for me!
Fair head, come home to me.
Home from the jealous sea,
Long weeks I've watched for you,
My door unlatched for you.
Door and heart open be —
Fair head, come home to me!
Lad, when you sailed away
Gulls cried the livelong day —
Meg wept where all might see,
"Fair head, come home to me."
I found no words to say,
Watching you sail away.
Meg cried, "Shame on the sea,
Fair head, come home to me!"
Nay, but I made no moan
When the sea took my own,
No moan where men could see
For lover lost to me.
Only, when star to star
Gleams where the rock-pools are —
Only, when lights at sea
Show boats not dear to me,
Then am I free to cry.
Up to the watching sky.
Then to the sea I lean —
Dipping my hands therein.
Whispering as now I do,
Low to the sea — and you,
"Drowned and dead though you be,
Fair head, come home to me!"
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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