Poem fractal

On the Death of a Particular Friend

by James Thomson

c. 11 September 1700 to 27 August 1748 (~48)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I know no subject more elevating, more amusing, more ready to awake the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of Nature.”

A defence of nature as the highest subject for poetry, philosophy, and moral feeling · Preface to the second edition of Winter, 1726

More remarks (11)

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. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.1376 + 0.3087i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Drinkwater · −0.1743 + 0.3067i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.1565 + 0.2841i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.1283 + 0.2910i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Keats · −0.1852 + 0.3122i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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