Poem fractal

Along the dark and silent night

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. James Whitcomb Riley · −0.3814 − 0.0937i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Gerald Massey · −0.3926 − 0.0887i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Masefield · −0.3492 − 0.0931i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Herbert Gorman · −0.3474 − 0.0818i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Now
    Violet Fane · −0.4038 − 0.0860i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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