Poem fractal

The Miller’s Daughter

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 to 6 October 1892 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“For myself, the world is the shadow of God.”

Expressing a vision of the visible world as a reflection of divinity · Recorded conversation in the Memoir

More remarks (44)

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. William Sharp · −0.4173 − 0.5260i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.4280 − 0.5360i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emma Lazarus · −0.4231 − 0.5165i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amy Lowell · −0.4052 − 0.5348i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  5. Bliss Carman · −0.4354 − 0.5361i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
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