Poem fractal

To the Virgins, to make much of Time

by Robert Herrick

24 August 1591 to 15 October 1674 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The end of all our travail is to find rest.”

Connecting human striving with the desire for peace · Religious prose and devotional writing

More remarks (5)

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. Richard Jago · 0.1946 − 0.6485i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ada Cambridge · 0.1933 − 0.6563i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Richard Lovelace · 0.1932 − 0.6267i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. J.M. Synge · 0.1691 − 0.6131i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 0.1656 − 0.6817i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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