Poem fractal

The Myrtle Bough

by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

25 September 1793 to 16 May 1835 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is so pleasant to write as if one were talking by the fireside in winter, or on some quiet garden-seat in summer-time.”

Presenting correspondence as an intimate conversation between friends · Letter to Joanna Baillie, 1827

More remarks (39)

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 · −0.7489 − 0.3881i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edward Thomas · −0.7420 − 0.3714i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  3. Howard Phillips Lovecraft · −0.6987 − 0.3934i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sarah Doudney · −0.6867 − 0.4139i · 0.066 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dante Gabriel Rossetti · −0.6811 − 0.3832i · 0.074 away · Compare side by side
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