Poem fractal

O gentle Sleep!

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that has induced me to do this, but real humility.”

Explaining autobiographical writing as an acknowledgement of the limits of his powers · Letter to Sir George Beaumont, 1805

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. Hartley Coleridge · 0.2487 + 0.4990i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. D. H. Lawrence · 0.2243 + 0.5221i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 0.2118 + 0.4592i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ernest Dowson · 0.2068 + 0.4604i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.2088 + 0.5215i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
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