Wild Asters
In the spring I asked the daisies
If his words were true,
And the clever little daisies
Always knew.
Now the fields are brown and barren,
Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
Not one knows.
Poem fractal
0.044 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.
−0.4992 − 0.9035i
Drawing the boundary…
by A. A. Milne
−0.4899 − 0.9465i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
In the spring I asked the daisies
If his words were true,
And the clever little daisies
Always knew.
Now the fields are brown and barren,
Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
Not one knows.
by A. A. Milne
Lords of the Nursery
Wait in a row,
Five on the high wall,
And four on the low;
Big Kings and Little Kings,
Brown Bears and Black,
All of them waiting
Till John comes back.
Some think that John boy
Is lost in the wood,
Some say he couldn't be,
Some say he could.
Some think that John boy
Hides on the hill;
Some say he won't come back,
Some say he will.
High was the sun, when
John went away....
Here they've been waiting
All through the day;
Big Bears and Little Bears,
White Kings and Black,
All of them waiting
Till John comes back.
Lords of the Nursery
Looked down the hill,
Some saw the sheep-fold,
Some saw the mill;
Some saw the roofs
Of the little grey town....
And their shadows grew long
As the sun slipt down.
Gold between the poplars
An old moon shows;
Silver up the star-way
The full moon rose;
Silver down the star-way
The old moon crept....
And, one by another,
The grey fields slept.
Lords of the Nursery
Their still watch keep....
They hear from the sheep-fold
The rustle of sheep.
A young bird twitters
And hides its head;
A little wind suddenly
Breathes, and is dead.
Slowly and slowly
Dawns the new day....
What's become of John boy?
No one can say.
Some think that John boy
Is lost on the hill;
Some say he won't come back,
Some say he will.
What's become of John boy?
Nothing at all,
He played with his skipping rope,
He played with his ball.
He ran after butterflies,
Blue ones and red;
He did a hundred happy things -
And then went to bed.
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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