Poem fractal

The Spindle Song

by Sir Walter Scott

15 August 1771 to 21 September 1832 (~61)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“But never a being, from my infancy upwards, hated task-work as I hate it; and yet I have done a great deal in my day.”

A humorous confession about achievement despite resistance to routine · Journal, 1 December 1825

More remarks (17)

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. Ernest Dowson · −0.2161 − 0.6994i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. A. Milne · −0.2165 − 0.7006i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Grace Fallow Norton · −0.2541 − 0.7021i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Trumbull Stickney · −0.2534 − 0.7074i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Mary Robinson · −0.2631 − 0.6945i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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