Poem fractal

Sound Sleep

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“If dear Lucy and you are as happy as I would (if I could) make you, earth will be the foretaste and stepping-stone to heaven.”

She imagines human happiness as preparation for a greater spiritual fulfilment · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 10 July 1873

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. D. H. Lawrence · −0.6715 − 0.3879i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dante Gabriel Rossetti · −0.6811 − 0.3832i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Charles Williams · −0.6634 − 0.4129i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sarah Doudney · −0.6867 − 0.4139i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. Howard Phillips Lovecraft · −0.6987 − 0.3934i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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