Poem fractal

A Jacobite's Epitaph

by Thomas Babington Macaulay

25 October 1800 to 28 December 1859 (~59)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.”

Commenting on the lasting notoriety attached to Machiavelli's name · Essay, Machiavelli (1827)

More remarks (38)

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 Townsend Trowbridge · −0.0151 + 1.0360i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Campbell · 0.0111 + 1.0975i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  3. Walt Whitman · −0.0394 + 1.0690i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  4. Fiona Macleod · −0.0496 + 1.0441i · 0.057 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · 0.0392 + 1.0015i · 0.070 away · Compare side by side
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