Poem fractal

Thou Wakest from Rosy Sleep

by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

25 September 1793 to 16 May 1835 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“In my opinion, there can be no real grandeur unless mind is made the ruling power, and its ascendancy asserted, even amidst the wildest storms of passion.”

Valuing intellectual and moral command above uncontrolled passion · Letter, Bronwylfa, 14 May 1823

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.1507 − 0.6645i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Phoebe Cary · −0.1800 − 0.6863i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.1795 − 0.6686i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Anonymous · −0.1322 − 0.6828i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.1617 − 0.7098i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content