Poem fractal

Could I but harmonise one kindly thought

by Hartley Coleridge

19 September 1796 to 6 January 1849 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is a great mistake to suppose that education is to supply the place of natural gifts, or that natural gifts could dispense with education.”

Presenting education and natural ability as necessary complements · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 15 May 1843

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. Christina Rossetti · −0.2119 + 0.7482i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.2052 + 0.7667i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.2071 + 0.7724i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Tennyson Turner · −0.1909 + 0.7695i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.2349 + 0.7551i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content