Poem fractal

The Garden of Love

by William Blake

28 November 1757 to 12 August 1827 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.”

Belief is granted a share in truth even before it is proved · Proverbs of Hell, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

More remarks (86)

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 · −0.4337 − 0.3037i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edmund Clarence Stedman · −0.4066 − 0.2918i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.4137 − 0.2851i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4406 − 0.3017i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Campbell · −0.4093 − 0.3183i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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