Poem fractal

A Leave-Taking

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

5 April 1837 to 10 April 1909 (~72)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We might even, in time, come to think it possible to enjoy the naked beauty of a statue or a picture without any virtuous vision behind it of a filthy fancy; which would be immoral.”

Ironically attacking prudish interpretations of beauty in art · Notes on Poems and Reviews

More remarks (54)

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. Lord Byron · −0.0945 + 0.3691i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.0653 + 0.3726i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Keats · −0.0639 + 0.3389i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.0667 + 0.3821i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.1149 + 0.3513i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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