Poem fractal

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

by Christopher Marlowe

26 February 1564 to 30 May 1593 (~29)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.”

Expressing the torment of a consciousness unable to escape itself · Doctor Faustus, spoken by Mephistophilis

More remarks (4)

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. Mina Loy · −0.5071 − 0.5672i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · −0.5117 − 0.5487i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Edmondstoune Aytoun · −0.4908 − 0.5726i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.4801 − 0.5570i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Cullen Bryant · −0.4982 − 0.5830i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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