Poem fractal

Hohenlinden

by Thomas Campbell

27 July 1777 to 15 June 1844 (~67)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Now Barabbas was a publisher.”

A wry jab at the commercial side of literature, playing on the biblical robber · Attributed remark (commonly linked to Campbell; also claimed for Byron, but Smiles records it of Campbell)

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. Sidney Lanier · −0.6679 − 0.5737i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Bridges · −0.6549 − 0.5846i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Helen Hunt Jackson · −0.6280 − 0.6087i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
  4. Giles Farnaby · −0.6173 − 0.5494i · 0.060 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.6884 − 0.6324i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content