Poem fractal

Dreams

by Cecil Frances Alexander

14 April 1818 to 12 October 1895 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“You see what I wanted to say is just so and so, not something else.”

Her firm stance against well-meaning editorial alterations to her hymns · Conversation (as recorded by William Alexander)

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. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.0383 − 0.5751i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. James Thomson · −0.0349 − 0.5791i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Eugene Field · −0.0262 − 0.5655i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Donne · −0.0482 − 0.5832i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.0563 − 0.5610i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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