Poem fractal

My own heart let me more have pity on

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

28 July 1844 to 8 June 1889 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring.”

A brief expression of wonder at the renewing beauty of the natural world · Journal

More remarks (4)

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. Mathilde Blind · −0.3049 + 0.2893i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.3088 + 0.2894i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.2748 + 0.2619i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Rupert Brooke · −0.3279 + 0.2669i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. Vachel Lindsay · −0.2930 + 0.2377i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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