Poem fractal

A Thrush Before Dawn

by Alice Meynell

11 October 1847 to 27 November 1922 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Children have a fastidiousness that time is slow to cure.”

Observing the refined sensibilities of childhood that often fade with age · Essay or conversation (commonly attributed)

More remarks (11)

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. George Santayana · −0.2534 − 0.4161i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ben Jonson · −0.2527 − 0.4345i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Felicia Dorothea Hemans · −0.2645 − 0.4270i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Greenleaf Whittier · −0.2637 − 0.4334i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Russell Lowell · −0.2553 − 0.4378i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
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