Poem fractal

The Beggar Maid

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 to 6 October 1892 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“True progress is gradation.”

Arguing that lasting improvement usually develops by measured stages · Chance saying recorded in the Memoir, 1888

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. D. H. Lawrence · 0.3165 − 0.2803i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. A. Milne · 0.3263 − 0.2968i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Hart Crane · 0.2940 − 0.3192i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.2818 − 0.2555i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Van Alstyne Weaver · 0.2623 − 0.3092i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content