Poem fractal

To a Young Lady

by William Cowper

26 November 1731 to 25 April 1800 (~69)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Home is the nicest word there is.”

A concise expression of home as a source of belonging and emotional comfort · Letter to Lady Hesketh, 1785

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. T. Sturge Moore · −0.6562 − 0.0617i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.6644 − 0.0433i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Masefield · −0.6456 − 0.0300i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.6435 − 0.0825i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Blake · −0.6320 − 0.0928i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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