Poem fractal

Ode to Duty

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The end of Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of pleasure.”

Balancing emotional intensity with the pleasure of art · Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1802

More remarks (44)

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. Sir Lewis Morris · −0.0599 − 0.0716i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Ford · −0.0899 − 0.0631i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward Lear · −0.0444 − 0.0758i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Susan Coolidge · −0.0419 − 0.0781i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.0739 − 0.0345i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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