Poem fractal

Fading Beauty

by Thomas Flatman

21 February 1635 to 8 December 1688 (~53)

Browse poets 678

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. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey · −0.2899 − 0.4291i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edgar Lee Masters · −0.2747 − 0.4447i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2819 − 0.4204i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. W.M. Herschell · −0.2840 − 0.4192i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Greenleaf Whittier · −0.2637 − 0.4334i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
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