Poem fractal

The Happy Life of a Country Parson

by Alexander Pope

21 May 1688 to 30 May 1744 (~56)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.”

Condemning factional politics as collective folly serving private interests · Letter to Edward Blount, 27 August 1714

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.4595 + 0.9691i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Herrick · −0.5095 + 0.9801i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  3. Banjo Paterson · −0.4792 + 1.0240i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Masefield · −0.5079 + 1.0170i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alan Seeger · −0.5233 + 0.9889i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content