Poem fractal

I Go, Sweet Friends!

by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

25 September 1793 to 16 May 1835 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Some passages seem to give me back my own thoughts and feelings, my whole inner being, with a mirror, more true than ever friend could hold up.”

Describing the startling experience of recognising oneself in another writer's work · Letter fragment on Corinne

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. John Greenleaf Whittier · −0.2637 − 0.4334i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alice Meynell · −0.2544 − 0.4246i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Lord Byron · −0.2620 − 0.4395i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ben Jonson · −0.2527 − 0.4345i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Russell Lowell · −0.2553 − 0.4378i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
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