Poem fractal

What Is Our Life?

by Sir Walter Raleigh

c. 1554 to 29 October 1618 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”

Linking maritime power with commerce, wealth, and global influence · History of the World

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.1929 + 0.2924i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.1926 + 0.3020i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Keats · −0.1852 + 0.3122i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Drinkwater · −0.1743 + 0.3067i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.1988 + 0.2780i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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