Poem fractal

Ode Written in the Year 1746

by WIlliam Collins

25 December 1721 to 12 June 1759 (~38)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have but one book, but that is the best.”

Referring to the New Testament while seeking consolation amid gathering mental distress · Conversation with Samuel Johnson, as recorded in Johnson's Life of Collins

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. Dante Gabriel Rossetti · −0.6811 − 0.3832i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. D. H. Lawrence · −0.6715 − 0.3879i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.7095 − 0.3348i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · −0.6630 − 0.3895i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  5. Howard Phillips Lovecraft · −0.6987 − 0.3934i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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