Poem fractal

Addressed to a Young Man of Fortune

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 to 25 July 1834 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Shakespeare is the Spinosistic deity — an omnipresent creativeness. Milton is the deity of prescience.”

Contrasting the creative modes of Shakespeare and Milton · Table Talk, 12 May 1830

More remarks (70)

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. John Donne · −0.5618 + 0.9485i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alan Seeger · −0.5233 + 0.9889i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Herrick · −0.5095 + 0.9801i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  4. Jonathan Swift · −0.5647 + 0.9184i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Masefield · −0.5079 + 1.0170i · 0.068 away · Compare side by side
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