Poem fractal

Peace! what do tears avail?

by Barry Cornwall

21 November 1787 to 5 October 1874 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It seemed my destiny to float along from the cradle to the grave on the happy stream of mediocrity.”

Self-deprecatingly accepting an ordinary place in life · Autobiographical fragment, Chapter I (published posthumously, 1877)

More remarks (49)

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. A. A. Milne · −0.3063 − 0.3602i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. D. H. Lawrence · −0.3153 − 0.3719i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar A. Guest · −0.3172 − 0.3723i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Campion · −0.2989 − 0.3586i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.2984 − 0.3835i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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