Poem fractal

Only a Dancing Girl

by William Schwenck Gilbert

18 November 1836 to 29 May 1911 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.”

Highlighting how universal privilege diminishes individual distinction · Conversation / spoken remark (adapted into theatrical dialogue)

More remarks (3)

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. William Sharp · −0.3613 − 0.6941i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · −0.3586 − 0.7126i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.3695 − 0.7056i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Lord Byron · −0.3565 − 0.7156i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3760 − 0.6947i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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