Poem fractal

Tempus Fugit

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A great slice of my heart travels about with him now, he being the only one of his own standing left to me.”

Loss has concentrated her affection on her surviving brother · Letter to Lucy Rossetti, January 1887

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. Anna Lætitia Barbauld · −0.3386 − 0.3252i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.3239 − 0.3286i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. D. H. Lawrence · −0.3425 − 0.3227i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.3483 − 0.3326i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  5. Cale Young Rice · −0.3176 − 0.3481i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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