Poem fractal

Love's Philosophy

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792 to 8 July 1822 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“When composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline.”

A provocative observation about the difficulty of preserving the intensity of inspiration in finished work. · 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. Thomas Hardy · −0.4119 − 0.4944i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Banjo Paterson · −0.4039 − 0.4891i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  3. Charlotte Brontë · −0.4144 − 0.4764i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4114 − 0.5126i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Cullen Bryant · −0.4070 − 0.5143i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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