Poem fractal

The House That Was

by Laurence Binyon

10 August 1869 to 10 March 1943 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We get a sense for particular beauties of nature, rather than a sense for Nature herself.”

Distinguishing isolated scenic pleasures from a deeper apprehension of nature as a whole. · Essay, The Flight of the Dragon (1911)

More remarks (39)

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. Thomas Jordan · −0.5063 + 0.3911i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ernest Dowson · −0.5013 + 0.4187i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edwin Markham · −0.4999 + 0.3805i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alice Meynell · −0.5505 + 0.3725i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  5. T. E. Brown · −0.4869 + 0.3735i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
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