Poem fractal

Prayer of St. Francis Xavier

by Alexander Pope

21 May 1688 to 30 May 1744 (~56)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“whatever is very good sense must have been common sense in all times; and what we call Learning, is but the knowledge of the sense of our predecessors.”

Connecting sound judgement with inherited human knowledge · Preface to The Works of Alexander Pope, 1717

More remarks (35)

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. Fulke Greville · −0.2665 − 0.0174i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2815 + 0.0017i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2542 − 0.0181i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Isaac Watts · −0.2948 − 0.0339i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Moore · −0.2622 + 0.0031i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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