Poem fractal

The Swagman's Rest

by Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 to 5 February 1941 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“People seem to me to take racing so gloomily. One could make it very funny without much effort and it would point a good moral as I could show the folly of betting.”

Proposing humour as a way to expose the foolishness surrounding gambling · Letter to George Robertson, 7 January 1910

More remarks (19)

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. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.4089 − 0.0419i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hardy · −0.4055 − 0.0790i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Felicia Dorothea Hemans · −0.3880 − 0.0380i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Now
    Violet Fane · −0.4038 − 0.0860i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3889 − 0.0292i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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