Poem fractal

Scarborough Fair

by Francis James Child

1 February 1825 to 11 September 1896 (~71)

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. John Boyle O'Reilly · 0.3205 − 0.3721i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. George Gascoigne · 0.2877 − 0.3659i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · 0.3205 − 0.3514i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emanuel Morgan · 0.2920 − 0.3557i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hardy · 0.2831 − 0.3734i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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