Poem fractal

The Hymn of the Wiltshire Laborers

by Charles Dickens

7 February 1812 to 9 June 1870 (~58)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“If I felt your warm and generous welcome less, I should be better able to thank you.”

A graceful admission that deep gratitude can make eloquence difficult · Speech, Edinburgh, 25 June 1841

More remarks (144)

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2751 − 0.4967i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lucian B. Watkins · −0.2690 − 0.5056i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Joyce · −0.2517 − 0.5087i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · −0.2371 − 0.4841i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Theodore Tilton · −0.2627 − 0.5126i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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