Poem fractal

Lullaby

by Richard Rowlands

c. 1550 to c. 1640 (~90)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“She had that instinctive malice that makes one pick out for hatred the very persons who have done one a good turn. She was not merely ungrateful, but her only response to a benefit received was to revenge it.”

A sharp characterisation of ingratitude turning into active hostility · Prose comment on Queen Elizabeth

More remarks (1)

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. Lewis Carroll · 0.2731 − 0.7493i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.3201 − 0.8015i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Burns · 0.3109 − 0.8198i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.3364 − 0.7660i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward Lear · 0.2458 − 0.7997i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
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