Poem fractal

Eternal Father, strong to save

by William Whiting

1 November 1825 to 3 May 1878 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Before you depart, I will give you something to anchor your faith.”

Offering a hymn of trust in God's power over the sea to a student anxious about an Atlantic voyage · Conversation with a pupil (as traditionally recounted)

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 Wordsworth · −0.1880 − 0.4858i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. E. Nesbit · −0.1789 − 0.4746i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.1917 − 0.4942i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.1912 − 0.4734i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Greene · −0.1750 − 0.4655i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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