Poem fractal

Le lac

by Alphonse de Lamartine

21 October 1790 to 1 March 1869 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Utopias are often only premature truths.”

Original: Les utopies ne sont souvent que des vérités prématurées. — Suggests that what seems visionary may simply anticipate ideas whose time has not yet come. · Histoire des Girondins, 1847 (French)

More remarks (13)

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. John Donne · 0.4652 + 0.1045i · 0.069 away · Compare side by side
  2. Frederic William Moorman · 0.5456 − 0.0004i · 0.073 away · Compare side by side
  3. D. H. Lawrence · 0.5869 + 0.0285i · 0.075 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas, Lord Vaux · 0.4587 + 0.1061i · 0.075 away · Compare side by side
  5. King James I of Scotland · 0.5021 + 0.1434i · 0.077 away · Compare side by side
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