Poem fractal

The Maypole

by Robert Herrick

24 August 1591 to 15 October 1674 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The soul's a thing immortal, and therefore must not be enslaved to mortal things.”

Asserting spiritual freedom from worldly attachment · Religious prose and devotional writing

More remarks (5)

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. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.6548 − 0.7566i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hardy · −0.6540 − 0.7416i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Carl Sandburg · −0.6439 − 0.7432i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.7194 − 0.7582i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  5. Fiona Macleod · −0.6185 − 0.7356i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
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