Poem fractal

Voice of Progress

by Richard Realf

14 June 1832 to 28 October 1878 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have erred greatly in my life, and suffered greatly, but I have always been a servant and never a hireling of the truth.”

Claiming loyalty to truth even amid personal failure and pain · Letter, 1877

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. Owen Seaman · −0.4474 − 0.3079i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4406 − 0.3017i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward Shanks · −0.4408 − 0.3103i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sir Lewis Morris · −0.4548 − 0.2930i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  5. A. A. Milne · −0.4337 − 0.3037i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
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