Poem fractal

The Lowest Trees Have Tops

by Sir Edward Dyer

c. October 1543 to 11 May 1607 (~64)

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 Chatterton · −0.1266 + 0.4078i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.1464 + 0.4046i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Lord Byron · −0.1244 + 0.4283i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Paul Laurence Dunbar · −0.1142 + 0.4109i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. A. A. Milne · −0.1227 + 0.3824i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content