Poem fractal

To the Nightingale

by Sir John Davies

16 April 1569 to 8 December 1626 (~57)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The English laws were not communicated to the Irish, nor the benefit and protection thereof allowed unto them, though they earnestly desired and sought the same.”

Identifying the withholding of legal equality as a principal cause of prolonged resistance · Essay, A Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely Subdued

More remarks (2)

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. Anne Brontë · 0.3776 − 0.6493i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 0.3692 − 0.6155i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  3. T. S. Eliot · 0.3670 − 0.6817i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Ford · 0.4104 − 0.6174i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  5. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.3533 − 0.6102i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
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