Poem fractal
0.018 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.
−0.0298 − 0.6576i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.0402 − 0.6427i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
By a lake below the mountain
Hangs the birch, as if, in glee,
The lake had flung the moon a fountain,
She had turned it to a tree.
Therefore do her dull leaves glimmer
Like the waves that mothered them.
Therefore flits a moony shimmer
Always round her curvèd stem.
Ye are builders little builders,
Not with mortar, brick and stone,
But your work is far more glorious—
Ye are building freedom's throne.
Where the ocean never slumbers
Works the coral 'neath the spray,
By and by a reef or island
Rears its head to greet the day
'Then the balmy rains and sunshine
Scatter treasures o'er the soil,
'Till a place for human footprints,
Crown the little builder's toil.
When the stately ships sweep o'er them,
Cresting all the sea with foam,
Little think these patient toilers,
They are building man a home.
Do you ask me, precious children,
How your little hands can build,
That you love the name of freedom,
But your fingers are unskilled?
Not on thrones or in proud temples,
Does fair freedom seek her rest;
No, her chosen habitations,
Are the hearts that love her best.
Would you gain the highest freedom?
Live for God and man alone,
Then each heart in freedom's temple,
Will be like a living stone.
Fill your minds with useful knowledge,
Learn to love the true and right;
Thus you'll build the throne of freedom,
On a pedestal of light.
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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