Poem fractal

See what a lovely shell

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 to 6 October 1892 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I can see every scene in my poems in the mind’s eye: had I been trained to draw, I could set them all down according to my own idea of each.”

Describing the vivid visual imagination underlying his poetry · F. T. Palgrave’s recollections

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.1634 − 0.7162i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. A.E.Housman · −0.1513 − 0.7232i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Stephen Crane · −0.1695 − 0.7303i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Frances E. W. Harper · −0.1880 − 0.7196i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Felicia Dorothea Hemans · −0.1587 − 0.6815i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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