Poem fractal

You'll love Me yet

by Robert Browning

7 May 1812 to 12 December 1889 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am naturally earnest, in earnest about whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I think of another.”

A concise statement of the concentration and seriousness he brought to creative work · Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, 30 April 1845

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. Elizabeth Thomas · 0.6648 − 0.5506i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · 0.6692 − 0.4836i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  3. Antoine Ó Raifteirí · 0.6694 − 0.5562i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard Aldington · 0.7273 − 0.5211i · 0.064 away · Compare side by side
  5. Samuel Hoffenstein · 0.6226 − 0.5681i · 0.065 away · Compare side by side
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