Poem fractal

Written at an Inn at Henley

by William Shenstone

18 November 1714 to 11 February 1763 (~49)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have no notion of a happy life, but a happy moment.”

Finding happiness in vivid, passing moments rather than in an imagined permanently happy life · Letters, as commonly attributed

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. Aphra Behn · −0.1285 − 0.4743i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Anne Brontë · −0.1577 − 0.4625i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Burns · −0.1149 − 0.4846i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charlotte Richardson · −0.1450 − 0.4442i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Gray · −0.1243 − 0.5061i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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