Poem fractal

Give Place, Ye Lovers

by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

c. 1517 to 19 January 1547 (~30)

Browse poets 678

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. Thomas Flatman · −0.2818 − 0.4342i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. W.M. Herschell · −0.2840 − 0.4192i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2819 − 0.4204i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar Lee Masters · −0.2747 − 0.4447i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Fergusson · −0.3018 − 0.4484i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content