Poem fractal

The Old Wives' Prayer

by Robert Herrick

24 August 1591 to 15 October 1674 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The end of all our travail is to find rest.”

Connecting human striving with the desire for peace · 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. Otto Leland Bohanan · −0.6012 − 0.5019i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Bliss Carman · −0.6272 − 0.4723i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton · −0.5800 − 0.4668i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.6164 − 0.5266i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Makepeace Thackeray · −0.6264 − 0.4600i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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