Poem fractal

To Olivia

by Francis Thompson

18 December 1859 to 13 November 1907 (~48)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The Church, which was once the mother of poets no less than of saints, during the last two centuries has relinquished to aliens the chief glories of poetry, if the chief glories of holiness she has preserved for her own.”

Lamenting the separation of poetry and religious life · Essay on Shelley

More remarks (2)

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. Henry Constable · −0.0889 + 0.1062i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Henryson · −0.0814 + 0.1094i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0945 + 0.0986i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Oldham · −0.0660 + 0.1165i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. May
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.1156 + 0.0980i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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