Poem fractal

Beggars

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy happier”

Describing poetry as both consolation and an enlargement of happiness · Letter to Lady Beaumont, 21 May 1807

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. D. H. Lawrence · 0.2868 − 0.0648i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. James Beattie · 0.3019 − 0.0365i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  3. George Sterling · 0.3105 − 0.0338i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edward Herbert · 0.2707 − 0.0285i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  5. James D. Corrothers · 0.3190 − 0.1117i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
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