Poem fractal

Animula vagula blandula

by Publius Aelius Hadrianus

24 January 76 to 10 July 138 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“My little soul, wandering, charming, guest and companion of the body, into what places will you now go?”

Original: Animula vagula blandula, hospes comesque corporis, quae nunc abibis in loca? — Reflects a tender, philosophical curiosity upon facing mortality. · Attributed deathbed address, Historia Augusta (Latin)

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 Joyce · 1.0486 − 1.2466i · 0.070 away · Compare side by side
  2. Barry Cornwall · 0.9800 − 1.2341i · 0.070 away · Compare side by side
  3. Paul Valéry · 0.9475 − 1.1038i · 0.109 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.9394 − 1.0842i · 0.129 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charles Bertram Johnson · 0.8953 − 1.2419i · 0.144 away · Compare side by side
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