Poem fractal

One Day

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“So much of my heart is yours that you may be sure of my sympathy.”

A simple statement of the enduring closeness between brother and sister · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 2 January 1893

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. Watcyn Wyn · 0.1653 − 0.3882i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Tomkins · 0.1700 − 0.3820i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · 0.1648 − 0.4077i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · 0.1660 − 0.3524i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alexander Anderson · 0.1710 − 0.4129i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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