Poem fractal

Your Looks so Often Cast

by Sir Thomas Wyatt

c. 1503 to 11 October 1542 (~39)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Let my friend bring me into court; but let my merit and my service keep me there.”

Emphasising personal merit and service over mere patronage for lasting position · Common saying, recorded in biographical accounts

More remarks (3)

Drawing the boundary…

Read the poem Another poem

A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. A poem can be drawn the same way.

The poem’s constant is read from the build of its lines: their length, the size of the stanzas, and the share of vowels. Poems whose constants lie closer together are built more alike. The same poem always draws the same picture. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.

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.

Poems nearby in the constant

A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

  1. Lizette Woodworth Reese · 0.4360 − 0.7946i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · 0.4550 − 0.7773i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sara Teasdale · 0.4621 − 0.7808i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  4. Lady Nairne · 0.4649 − 0.8146i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ralph Waldo Emerson · 0.4630 − 0.7790i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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