Poem fractal

The Changes: to Corinna

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.7467 + 0.2442i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Philip Bourke Marston · 0.6475 + 0.2338i · 0.108 away · Compare side by side
  3. Lady Anne Lindsay · 0.7001 + 0.3595i · 0.115 away · Compare side by side
  4. Henry Scott Holland · 0.6550 + 0.3208i · 0.117 away · Compare side by side
  5. Francis James Child · 0.6280 + 0.2443i · 0.125 away · Compare side by side
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