Poem fractal

To Night

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792 to 8 July 1822 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The savage is to the civilized man, as the child is to the adult.”

An example of Shelley's early nineteenth-century theory of cultural development, expressed in the language of his period. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

More remarks (44)

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. James Clarence Mangan · −0.0666 − 0.4111i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Stanley · −0.0836 − 0.4080i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Frost · −0.0570 − 0.4457i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sir John Davies · −0.0530 − 0.4535i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Joyce · −0.0356 − 0.4386i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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