Poem fractal

Forbearance

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 May 1803 to 27 April 1882 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life: nothing is great or desirable, if it is off from that.”

Measures work by its relation to one's true purpose rather than its social status · Essay, Wealth, The Conduct of Life (1860)

More remarks (85)

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. Robert Fergusson · 0.1626 + 0.2348i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Morris · 0.1971 + 0.2392i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Rudyard Kipling · 0.1944 + 0.2545i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt · 0.2061 + 0.2151i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar Lee Masters · 0.1793 + 0.2647i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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