Poem fractal

The Past

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792 to 8 July 1822 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world.”

Presenting poetry as a means of preserving beauty against disappearance and time. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

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. Robert Herrick · −0.5645 − 0.1907i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Wallace Stevens · −0.5381 − 0.1972i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur Symons · −0.5527 − 0.1755i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edward Thomas · −0.5737 − 0.2023i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.5517 − 0.2406i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
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