Poem fractal

The Night Has A Thousand Eyes

by Francis William Bourdillon

22 March 1852 to 13 January 1921 (~69)

Browse poets 678

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. Barry Cornwall · 0.1112 − 0.8608i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edward Smyth Jones · 0.1209 − 0.8666i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 0.1038 − 0.8536i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · 0.1043 − 0.8508i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Frost · 0.1020 − 0.8582i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content