Poem fractal

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes

by Charlotte Smith

4 May 1749 to 28 October 1806 (~57)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The language of the heart is not confined to any particular situation or time.”

Expressing the lasting and broadly human reach of emotional poetry · Prefatory prose to Elegiac Sonnets

More remarks (4)

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. Samuel Daniel · −0.0944 + 0.7809i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alan Seeger · −0.0812 + 0.7761i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Rudyard Kipling · −0.0978 + 0.7574i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.0697 + 0.7834i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.1122 + 0.7549i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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