Poem fractal

O roses for the flush of youth

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I can still say 'us' and look forward to the end of our separation.”

A small pronoun carries both surviving companionship and Christian hope of reunion · Letter to Lucy Rossetti, 21 April 1886

More remarks (60)

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. Robert Louis Stevenson · 0.2904 − 0.6936i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur Symons · 0.2880 − 0.6873i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  3. Langston Hughes · 0.2786 − 0.7151i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.3205 − 0.6982i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Ernest Henley · 0.3240 − 0.6819i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content