Poem fractal

A Farewell

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 to 6 October 1892 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“In this vale of Time the hills of Time often shut out the mountains of Eternity.”

Suggesting that immediate concerns obscure a larger spiritual reality · Recorded remarks on faith in the Memoir

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. Thomas Hardy · −0.0804 − 0.7533i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · −0.1001 − 0.7410i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Anthony Munday · −0.0654 − 0.7542i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · −0.0548 − 0.7357i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edwin Arlington Robinson · −0.0825 − 0.7661i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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