Poem fractal

To Sleep

by Philip Bourke Marston

13 August 1850 to 13 February 1887 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“No poem gives me such an idea of the heartlessness of Nature. The poem is Death within and Summer without—light girdling darkness—and it leaves a picture and impression on the mind never to be effaced.”

Admiring the unforgettable contrast between natural beauty and human grief · Letter to Louise Chandler Moulton, on The House of Death

More remarks (9)

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. Phineas Fletcher · −0.0736 + 0.1599i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Witter Bynner · −0.0716 + 0.1782i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.0599 + 0.1717i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.0559 + 0.1618i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ada Cambridge · −0.0569 + 0.1489i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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