v0.1 · available on Android

A poem for every photo.

Take a shot or pick from your library. Ibycus reads what's in it and pulls a verse from a corpus of classic Russian and English poetry — Blake, Fet, Dickinson, Tyutchev, Esenin.

● works offline ● Russian & English
Ibycus empty state, dark theme
Ibycus poem result
How it works

Three taps to a poem

i. Snap
Photo or library
One tap for camera, or pick an image you already have. Nothing to configure.
ii. Recognition
bird sky wire
feather morning
cloud 41% pole 28%
What's in the frame
Ibycus identifies what's in the photo and matches it against the corpus vocabulary.
iii. Verse
"Hope" is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
— Emily Dickinson 1 / 7
Matching lines
We pick a poem with the same images.
Examples

What Ibycus comes back with

Three real matches. Each card saves as PNG — share in stories or chat. Poems are shown in the original.

photo · palace facade
palace
London
I wandered through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
— William Blake
photo · river bend
river
The Outlet
My river runs to thee:
Blue sea, wilt welcome me?
My river waits reply.
Oh sea, look graciously!
— Emily Dickinson
photo · stone lion
statue monument
Sonnet 55
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
— William Shakespeare
Corpus

Classics, not a neural net

No generated stuff. Poems by Russian and English poets of the 18th–20th centuries, kept in the original. Russian on Russian, English on English — switch corpora in settings. The corpus grows with every release.

William Shakespeare
sonnets
William Blake
songs, prophecies
Emily Dickinson
lyrics
Alexander Blok
verse
Sergei Esenin
lyrics
Afanasy Fet
lyrics
Fyodor Tyutchev
verse
more soon
the corpus keeps growing
Screens

Just the photo and the lines

Four screens, day and night — nothing more. Swipe to delete, tap to open, pull to refresh.

Empty state
01 Empty state
History feed
02 History feed
Poem and photo
03 Poem + photo
Settings
04 Settings
Night theme
05 Night theme
"

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies.

— Emily Dickinson, c. 1872
FAQ

Questions we get

Is this a neural-net generator? +
No. Ibycus doesn't write anything — it only matches existing poems against what the camera sees. Object recognition runs on the device; photos never leave it.
What if my photo is just a coffee cup? +
Cup, cat, subway, selfie — it all works. Motifs like "morning", "light", "water", "home" come up often. If nothing fits, we offer a few alternatives.
Does it work offline? +
Yes. The corpus and the recognition model download once with the app. After that, no internet is needed.
Why "Ibycus"? +
Ibycus was a Greek lyric poet of the 6th century BC — one of the nine canonical poets of antiquity. He wrote about nature, beauty, and love, finding in the world around him an endless source of verse. The app takes his name: it too looks at the world and answers in lines.
Original or translated? +
Original. Russian poems are kept in Russian, English in English. We don't translate, to preserve rhythm and rhyme. You can switch corpora in settings — only Russian, only English, or both.
How much does it cost? +
The core features — matching, history, share-cards — are always available without paywalls. A premium mode with extra features is in the works; we'll announce when it's ready.
Ι

Your photo is waiting for its poem.

Works offline. Russian and English — switch in settings.

Coming soon App Store Get it on Google Play