Poem fractal

A Song of Autumn

by Arthur Hugh Clough

1 January 1819 to 13 November 1861 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Go straight on, however, and one’s sure to come out into a new country, on the other side the hills, sunny and bright.”

Using a railway journey as an image of perseverance through difficult periods · Letter from Cambridge, Massachusetts, 23 February 1853

More remarks (7)

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. Richard · 0.1952 − 0.4014i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Mackay · 0.1943 − 0.3819i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alexander Anderson · 0.1710 − 0.4129i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Tomkins · 0.1700 − 0.3820i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Watcyn Wyn · 0.1653 − 0.3882i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content