Poem fractal

Swinging the Lead

by Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 to 5 February 1941 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The fact is that all well-bred horses were too delicate to stand starvation, sickness and mismanagement.”

Condemning the suffering caused by military neglect rather than by the demands of service alone · Essay on horses and remounts during the Boer War

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0260 + 0.5447i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.0454 + 0.5502i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Keats · −0.0141 + 0.5136i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amy Lowell · −0.0062 + 0.5475i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Phineas Fletcher · −0.0422 + 0.5021i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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