Poem fractal

Napoleon's Farewell

by Lord Byron

22 January 1788 to 19 April 1824 (~36)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”

Capturing the sudden, dizzying arrival of literary celebrity · Reported remark on the success of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

More remarks (7)

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. Gerald Massey · −0.2400 + 0.6979i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Keats · −0.2846 + 0.7012i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2308 + 0.6979i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.2808 + 0.6952i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2261 + 0.7035i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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