Poem fractal

Felix Opportunitate Mortis

by Alfred Austin

30 May 1835 to 2 June 1913 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things, and I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.”

Suggesting that reliability is revealed through attention to small responsibilities · Prose writings / commonly attributed

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. John Donne · −0.0820 + 0.2438i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · −0.0688 + 0.2232i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.0821 + 0.2326i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Anne Brontë · −0.0251 + 0.2393i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Thomson · −0.0243 + 0.2564i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content