Poem fractal

The Deserted House

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 to 6 October 1892 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The world is part of an infinite plan, incomplete because it is a part. We cannot therefore read the riddle.”

Urging humility before the partial and mysterious nature of existence · Recorded conversation in the Memoir

More remarks (44)

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. Thomas d'Urfey · 0.0912 − 0.7967i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Williams · 0.0933 − 0.7592i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hardy · 0.0612 − 0.7720i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Wilmot · 0.0933 − 0.7543i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Arthur Larkin · 0.0536 − 0.7947i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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