Poem fractal

Eternity

by Robert Herrick

24 August 1591 to 15 October 1674 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The best of life is but intoxication, and the soberest men are the most deceived.”

Reflecting on illusion and the instability of human judgement · Hesperides, prose material

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. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.0064 − 1.1766i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Herrick · 0.0491 − 1.2185i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.0199 − 1.2667i · 0.069 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ernest Dowson · 0.0625 − 1.1622i · 0.071 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward Thomas · 0.0197 − 1.2730i · 0.074 away · Compare side by side
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