Poem fractal

To the Water-Nymphs Drinking at the Fountain

by Robert Herrick

24 August 1591 to 15 October 1674 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The world is a book, and every man is a letter in it.”

Viewing individual lives as part of a larger human record · Prose commonplace, commonly attributed

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 · −0.2049 − 0.7391i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Frances E. W. Harper · −0.1880 − 0.7196i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Stephen Crane · −0.1695 − 0.7303i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.2011 − 0.7219i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Vaughan · −0.2007 − 0.7214i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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