Poem fractal

The Islet

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 to 6 October 1892 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is hard to believe in God; but it is harder not to believe. I believe in God, not from what I see in Nature, but from what I find in man.”

Grounding religious belief in human consciousness rather than natural evidence · Recorded conversation, 1890

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. Carl Sandburg · −0.2553 − 0.0361i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2542 − 0.0181i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Hilaire Belloc · −0.2274 − 0.0311i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Fulke Greville · −0.2665 − 0.0174i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Lisle Bowles · −0.2234 − 0.0164i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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