Poem fractal

Dead Before Death

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Time will show, and I only wish what God wills; but I do not run up like quicksilver at the announcement.”

Facing uncertain health, she combines submission to providence with emotional restraint · Letter to Lucy Rossetti, 20 March 1892

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. Lady Jane Wilde · −0.4607 + 0.7545i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  2. Frederick Tennyson · −0.4423 + 0.7016i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  3. Louise Chandler Moulton · −0.4881 + 0.7388i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.4446 + 0.7502i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ebenezer Jones · −0.4925 + 0.7346i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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