Poem fractal

Young and Old

by Charles Kingsley

12 June 1819 to 23 January 1875 (~56)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The more I know, the more I forgive.”

Linking knowledge with compassion and a less judgmental understanding of others · Letters and Memories of Charles Kingsley

More remarks (1)

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. John Donne · 0.1673 + 0.0874i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ernest Hemingway · 0.1709 + 0.0840i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward James Mortimer Collins · 0.1804 + 0.1061i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Louis Untermeyer · 0.1962 + 0.1089i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1997 + 0.0912i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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