Poem fractal

To a Lady, Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her

by Sir George Etherege

c. 1635 to c. 10 May 1692 (~57)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Nature, you know, intended me for an idle fellow, and gave me passions and qualities fit for that blessed calling, but fortune has made a changeling of me, and necessity now forces me to set up for a fop of business.”

Wry complaint about being driven from idleness into official duties · Letterbook

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. Richard · 0.3567 − 0.4415i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Burns · 0.2918 − 0.4444i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sir Henry Wotton · 0.3564 − 0.4805i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  4. Vachel Lindsay · 0.2833 − 0.4356i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Butler Yeats · 0.2800 − 0.4451i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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