Poem fractal

Rain and Tears

by Edward James Mortimer Collins

29 June 1827 to 28 July 1876 (~49)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Death a friend that alone can bring the peace his treasures cannot purchase, and remove the pain his physicians cannot cure.”

Framing death as a merciful release beyond the reach of wealth or medicine · The Village Comedy

More remarks (5)

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. Charles Kingsley · 0.1718 + 0.0952i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Louis Untermeyer · 0.1962 + 0.1089i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · 0.1870 + 0.1268i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Donne · 0.1673 + 0.0874i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ernest Hemingway · 0.1709 + 0.0840i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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