Poem fractal

Break, Break, Break

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 to 6 October 1892 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence, but in the mastery, of his passions.”

Popularly attributed to Tennyson, but the original context is difficult to verify · Conversation, as commonly attributed

More remarks (44)

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. James Thomson · −0.0349 − 0.5791i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Cecil Frances Alexander · −0.0381 − 0.5686i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Donne · −0.0482 − 0.5832i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  4. Eugene Field · −0.0262 − 0.5655i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.0563 − 0.5610i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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