Poem fractal

The splendor falls on castle-walls

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 to 6 October 1892 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“That is old news, and good news, and new news.”

Finding perennial freshness in the Christian message · Letter to Emily Sellwood, 1839

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. Edith M. Thomas · −0.4803 − 0.0436i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. A. Milne · −0.4739 − 0.0292i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Hart Crane · −0.4916 − 0.0339i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Butler Yeats · −0.4610 − 0.0574i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Hart Crane · −0.4591 − 0.0262i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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