Poem fractal

The Hunter's Song

by Barry Cornwall

21 November 1787 to 5 October 1874 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The violet in the first grass, the daisy in the meadow, the rose and honeysuckle blossom which enrich every hedge, feed your mind gradually with grace and sweetness and strength.”

Presenting close attention to nature as nourishment for the mind · Autobiographical fragment, Chapter III (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. Charles Lamb · −0.5312 + 0.5612i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  2. David Gray · −0.5051 + 0.5426i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.5897 + 0.5365i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Keats · −0.6034 + 0.5226i · 0.061 away · Compare side by side
  5. D. H. Lawrence · −0.4816 + 0.5230i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
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