Poem fractal

As yet Thy Griefs Have Been but Summer Showers

by Amelia Alderson Opie

12 November 1769 to 2 December 1853 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am very thankful for what I can do, and I do not repine at what I can't do; and life flies only too fast.”

Acceptance of physical limitation without surrendering gratitude for life · Letter to Miss Gurney, 5 March 1852

More remarks (40)

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. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.7776 + 0.3534i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lydia Huntley Sigourney · −0.8229 + 0.3252i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  3. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.7985 + 0.2444i · 0.105 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Browning · −0.6945 + 0.3675i · 0.106 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Gillespie Magee Jr. · −0.6746 + 0.3085i · 0.131 away · Compare side by side
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