Poem fractal

When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted

by Rudyard Kipling

30 December 1865 to 18 January 1936 (~71)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“You stand on the threshold of an unbelievable future.”

Expressing confidence in the possibilities awaiting a developing society. · Speech, Growth and Responsibility, 1907

More remarks (152)

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. Banjo Paterson · −0.1944 + 1.5535i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  2. W. H. Davies · −0.1928 + 1.5480i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  3. George William Russell · −0.1553 + 1.5873i · 0.080 away · Compare side by side
  4. Wilfred Owen · −0.1334 + 1.5771i · 0.094 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.2204 + 1.6388i · 0.096 away · Compare side by side
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