Poem fractal

The Dial of Flowers

by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

25 September 1793 to 16 May 1835 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I begin to look at them very much in the light of so many Ogres, and to feel that it will be almost sufficient cause for self-gratulation, if I put my head into the wolf's jaws and escape unhurt.”

Wryly portraying theatrical managers as hazards awaiting a playwright · Letter to H. H. Milman, 16 October 1821

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. Walter de la Mare · −0.5084 − 0.4532i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Blake · −0.4992 − 0.4570i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hood · −0.5125 − 0.4633i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · −0.5283 − 0.4622i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · −0.4948 − 0.4249i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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