Poem fractal

I walk'd along a stream

by Christopher Marlowe

26 February 1564 to 30 May 1593 (~29)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.”

Presenting beauty through an expansive image of the night sky · Doctor Faustus, spoken by Faustus

More remarks (4)

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. Charlotte Smith · −0.4464 + 0.0772i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Bell Scott · −0.4153 + 0.0658i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hood · −0.4140 + 0.0501i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.4482 + 0.0321i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Moore · −0.4638 + 0.0832i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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