Poem fractal

The Seven Sisters

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There is a special character of greatness about humility for it implies that a man can, in an unusual degree, estimate the greatness of what is above us.”

Linking humility with the ability to recognise realities greater than oneself · Conversation, recollected by Aubrey de Vere

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 Burns · −0.0764 − 0.2180i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.0736 − 0.1770i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.1115 − 0.2066i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Herrick · −0.0500 − 0.2031i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. D. H. Lawrence · −0.0538 − 0.1761i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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