Poem fractal

To the Cuckoo

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The works of the old English dramatists are the gardens of our language.”

Celebrating the richness and variety of the early English dramatic tradition · Conversation, recorded by Christopher Wordsworth

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. Robert Burns · 0.3109 − 0.8198i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Oscar Wilde · 0.3174 − 0.8374i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Sheffield · 0.3328 − 0.8152i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.3201 − 0.8015i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · 0.3390 − 0.8515i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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