Poem fractal

Humming Birds

by Hartley Coleridge

19 September 1796 to 6 January 1849 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Yet what more calm than death, and the reflections which death begets in a Christian Mind?”

Finding solemn calm in Christian reflection on death · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 4 August 1834

More remarks (49)

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. Samuel Taylor Coleridge · −0.3966 + 0.1249i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Matthew Arnold · −0.3831 + 0.1354i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. King James Bible · −0.3972 + 0.1275i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.3751 + 0.1000i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ada Cambridge · −0.4114 + 0.1394i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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