Poem fractal

Let Not Sorrow Cloud Thy Brow

by Amelia Alderson Opie

12 November 1769 to 2 December 1853 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It was interesting to watch the lights from the habitations, far and near, as they gradually disappeared; and to feel that I, probably, was the only being awake and moving, in that vast space of land and water.”

A vivid moment of solitary wakefulness amid sea, darkness and distant human life · Letter to Thomas Brightwell, 11 February 1833

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. Banjo Paterson · −0.4095 − 0.0562i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Felicia Dorothea Hemans · −0.3880 − 0.0380i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3889 − 0.0292i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Hart Crane · −0.4115 − 0.0129i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hardy · −0.4055 − 0.0790i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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