Poem fractal

The Shortness of Life

by Francis Quarles

8 May 1592 to 8 September 1644 (~52)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Let the fear of a danger be a greater danger to thee than the danger itself.”

Warning that anxious anticipation can become more damaging than the threatened harm · Enchiridion, 1640 (aphorism)

More remarks (4)

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. Claude McKay · 0.1871 − 0.1123i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan · 0.1869 − 0.1301i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Keats · 0.1798 − 0.0644i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ford Madox Hueffer · 0.1532 − 0.0983i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  5. D. H. Lawrence · 0.2350 − 0.0586i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
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