Poem fractal

To His Forsaken Mistress

by Sir Robert Ayton

1570 to 25 February 1638 (~68)

Browse poets 678

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.3321 − 0.2165i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. W. H. Davies · −0.3478 − 0.2498i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3239 − 0.2137i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.3537 − 0.1986i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3551 − 0.1988i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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