Poem fractal

Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae

by Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 to 23 February 1900 (~33)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Faith, I think does pass, and Love, but Knowledge abideth. Let us seek Knowledge. At least let us shun emotion as we would hell, for which it is a synonym.”

A youthful attempt to place knowledge above faith, love and emotional experience · Marginalia on Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm, c. 1889

More remarks (40)

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 0.2118 + 0.4592i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · 0.2390 + 0.4883i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  3. D. H. Lawrence · 0.1698 + 0.4320i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  4. Lord Byron · 0.1597 + 0.4639i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · 0.1590 + 0.4446i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
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