Poem fractal

O! there are spirits of the air

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792 to 8 July 1822 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.”

Defining moral feeling as imaginative sympathy with others and with beauty · A Defence of Poetry

More remarks (44)

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. Arthur Symons · −0.2130 − 0.1656i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2192 − 0.1709i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  3. R. Williams Parry · −0.2273 − 0.1697i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  4. Carl Sandburg · −0.2253 − 0.1601i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  5. Banjo Paterson · −0.2054 − 0.1688i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
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