Poem fractal

When Thou Sleepest

by Charlotte Brontë

21 April 1816 to 31 March 1855 (~39)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

A declaration of personal freedom and self-determination · Prose novel, Jane Eyre

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. Richard · −0.3824 − 0.3952i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  2. Daniel Webster Davis · −0.4174 − 0.3763i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.4265 − 0.3783i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sara Teasdale · −0.3885 − 0.4302i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · −0.3811 − 0.4220i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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