Poem fractal

The lark now leaves his wat'ry nest

by Sir William Davenant

c. February 1606 to 7 April 1668 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“How much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable) who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of a historian.”

Defending the imaginative freedom of poetry against rigid historical constraint · From the Preface to Gondibert

More remarks (1)

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. John Keble · −0.1235 − 0.0129i · 0.002 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Burns · −0.1182 − 0.0033i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. D. H. Lawrence · −0.1201 − 0.0018i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Clare · −0.1125 − 0.0187i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  5. Julia Ward Howe · −0.1031 − 0.0231i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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