Poem fractal

Attendite Popule

by Lady Jane Wilde

27 December 1821 to 3 February 1896 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The women of Ireland have always been the guardians of its faith and its traditions.”

Honouring women as custodians of cultural memory and spiritual life · Essayistic prose on Ireland

More remarks (4)

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. Richard · −0.4446 + 0.7502i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Lisle Bowles · −0.4346 + 0.7514i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · −0.4613 + 0.7250i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. Louise Chandler Moulton · −0.4881 + 0.7388i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4745 + 0.7877i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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