Poem fractal
0.025 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.
−0.4928 − 0.4871i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.4782 − 0.5080i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Time is so long when a man is dead!
Some one sews; and the room is made
Very clean; and the light is shed
Soft through the window-shade.
Yesterday I thought: "I know
Just how the bells will sound, and how
The friends will talk, and the sermon go,
And the hearse-horse bow and bow!"
This is to-day; and I have nothing
To think of—nothing whatever to do
But to hear the throb of the pulse of a wing
That wants to fly back to you.
O lusty May, with Flora queen,
The balmy drops from Phoebus’ sheen
Prelucent beams before the day,
By the Diana groweth green
Through gladness of this lusty May.
Then Hesperus that is so bright,
To woeful hearts he casteth light
Right pleasantly before the day,
And shows and sheds forth of that sight
Through gladness of this lusty May.
The birds on boughs of every sort
Send forth their notes and make great mirth
On banks that bloom on every brae,
And fare and fly o’er field and firth
Through gladness of this lusty May.
All lovers’ hearts that are in care,
To their ladies they do repair
On fresh mornings before the day,
And are in mirth aye more and more
Through gladness of this lusty May.
Of all the months of the year,
To mirthful May there is no peer,
Then glistening garments are so gay,
Ye lovers all make merry cheer
Through gladness of this lusty May.
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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