Poem fractal

Long time a child, and still a child

by Hartley Coleridge

19 September 1796 to 6 January 1849 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Depend upon it, the surest means to make great people pleased with you is to put them into good humour with themselves.”

A shrewd observation on vanity, status and social tact · Letter to Derwent Coleridge, August 1830

More remarks (49)

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. Anna Hempstead Branch · 0.1465 + 0.5945i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1388 + 0.5955i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Austin · 0.1345 + 0.5971i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. A.E.Housman · 0.1430 + 0.6421i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1556 + 0.5812i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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