Poem fractal

Patience of Hope

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The world is full of suffering, but it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

Frequently attributed to Rossetti, but the wording and source are not securely documented · Religious prose, commonly attributed

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. A.E.Housman · −0.8911 − 0.7107i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Carl Sandburg · −0.8577 − 0.6750i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  3. Carl Sandburg · −0.8193 − 0.7232i · 0.084 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Burns · −0.8154 − 0.7469i · 0.097 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.7915 − 0.7157i · 0.110 away · Compare side by side
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