Poem fractal

Ode to Beauty

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 May 1803 to 27 April 1882 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

Presenting friendship as something created through reciprocal generosity · Essay, Friendship

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. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.2553 + 0.0156i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · −0.2631 + 0.0232i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Claude McKay · −0.2375 + 0.0037i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2226 + 0.0371i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Moore · −0.2622 + 0.0031i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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