Poem fractal

When Age Comes On

by James Whitcomb Riley

7 October 1849 to 22 July 1916 (~67)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Prose likes me not. In fact, prose is the only verse I write that is worse than my other verse.”

A wry confession that verse, not prose, was his real instrument · Letter to a publisher, 1897

More remarks (18)

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. Robert Herrick · −0.3732 − 0.0916i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Gerald Massey · −0.3926 − 0.0887i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Now
    Violet Fane · −0.4038 − 0.0860i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Aubrey Thomas de Vere · −0.3904 − 0.1183i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hardy · −0.4055 − 0.0790i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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