Poem fractal

Auld Robin Gray

by Lady Anne Lindsay

8 December 1750 to 6 May 1825 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The only proof of madness that the John Bulls find in me is my being contented with every thing as I find it.”

Defending contentment as a form of sanity against English expectations · Letter from the Cape of Good Hope, 1798

More remarks (2)

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. Henry Scott Holland · 0.6550 + 0.3208i · 0.059 away · Compare side by side
  2. D. H. Lawrence · 0.6228 + 0.3918i · 0.084 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.7049 + 0.4665i · 0.107 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Herrick · 0.7526 + 0.2567i · 0.115 away · Compare side by side
  5. Rudyard Kipling · 0.6928 + 0.4806i · 0.121 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content