Poem fractal

My days among the Dead are past

by Robert Southey

12 August 1774 to 21 March 1843 (~69)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There are three things which keep their appointed course, Time, Tide, & your father.”

A playful piece of paternal self-characterisation built on a familiar proverbial rhythm · Letter to Charles Cuthbert Southey, 1824

More remarks (35)

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. Philip Arthur Larkin · −0.1351 − 0.5433i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Mary Lamb · −0.1343 − 0.5458i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alexander Pope · −0.1126 − 0.5302i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Martin Peerson · −0.1265 − 0.5533i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hardy · −0.1449 − 0.5287i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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