Poem fractal

The Last Buccaneer

by Thomas Babington Macaulay

25 October 1800 to 28 December 1859 (~59)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.”

A concise critique of the American Constitution's lack of restraining forces · Letter to H. S. Randall, 23 May 1857

More remarks (38)

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. Dante Gabriel Rossetti · −0.2637 + 0.2966i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.2368 + 0.3336i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.2284 + 0.2778i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.2748 + 0.2619i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Barbour · −0.2069 + 0.2845i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
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