Poem fractal

A Divine Image

by William Blake

28 November 1757 to 12 August 1827 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Neither Youth nor Childhood is Folly or Incapacity. Some Children are Fools & so are some Old Men. But there is a vast Majority on the side of Imagination or Spiritual Sensation.”

Childhood is not a defect of reason but often a better organ of vision · Letter to the Rev. Dr John Trusler, 23 August 1799

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. Sara Teasdale · 0.1780 − 0.8708i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Mary Coleridge · 0.1453 − 0.8698i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Philip Bourke Marston · 0.1888 − 0.8867i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Blake · 0.1277 − 0.8638i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · 0.1653 − 0.8366i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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