Poem fractal

Soft be the voice

by Sir Henry Taylor

18 October 1800 to 27 March 1886 (~86)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The art of living easily as to money, is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.”

Advising a modest margin for ease and freedom from money cares · Notes from Life, Of Money

More remarks (14)

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. Sara Teasdale · −0.3885 − 0.4302i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.3761 − 0.4393i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.3767 − 0.4331i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · −0.3811 − 0.4220i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Dowland · −0.4128 − 0.4432i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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