Poem fractal

On One Who Died Discovering Her Kindness

by John Sheffield

8 September 1647 to 24 February 1721 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I lived doubtful, not dissolute; I die unresolved, not unresigned. Ignorance and error are incident to human nature. I trust in an Almighty and All-good God.”

A courtier's last accounting of faith, doubt, and the limits of human knowledge · Self-composed epitaph, directed in his will

More remarks (5)

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. Robert Burns · 0.0985 − 0.5581i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Wesley · 0.0994 − 0.5714i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. George Herbert · 0.0723 − 0.5646i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ernest Dowson · 0.1261 − 0.5386i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. D. H. Lawrence · 0.0883 − 0.5850i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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