Poem fractal

Beauty sat bathing by a spring

by Anthony Munday

c. 13 October 1560 to 10 August 1633 (~73)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Favour comes by conformity, and death by obstinacy.”

A terse observation on the practical consequences of yielding or resisting authority, drawn from his account of life among English Catholics in Rome · The English Romayne Lyfe (1582)

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. Thomas Hardy · −0.0804 − 0.7533i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lizette Woodworth Reese · −0.0454 − 0.7574i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edwin Arlington Robinson · −0.0825 − 0.7661i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · −0.0548 − 0.7357i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.0801 − 0.7349i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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