Poem fractal

Sympathy

by Francis Hastings Doyle

21 August 1810 to 8 June 1888 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The great desire of a good citizen should be to fill up, as far as possible, the gulfs that separate one set of Englishmen from another.”

Presenting civic life as a work of bridging social divisions · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

More remarks (16)

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.5117 − 0.5487i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.5264 − 0.5140i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christopher Marlowe · −0.5001 − 0.5569i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mina Loy · −0.5071 − 0.5672i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Ernest Henley · −0.5263 − 0.5779i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content