Poem fractal

Ne Plus Ultra

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 to 25 July 1834 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into, the mind.”

Suggesting that gentle counsel is more effective than forceful instruction · Table Talk

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. Maxwell Bodenheim · −0.4021 + 0.5748i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Tennyson Turner · −0.4196 + 0.6043i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Browning · −0.4236 + 0.5765i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4185 + 0.6114i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Butler Yeats · −0.3907 + 0.6246i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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