Poem fractal

The Indian Serenade

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792 to 8 July 1822 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry.”

Connecting the origins of language, society and poetry through the creative power of expression. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

More remarks (44)

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. Thomas Moore · −0.1808 − 0.6158i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Brontë · −0.1625 − 0.6239i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. W. H. Davies · −0.1549 − 0.6194i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. A.E.Housman · −0.1889 − 0.6305i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.1748 − 0.6445i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content