Poem fractal

Nature

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 May 1803 to 27 April 1882 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.”

Links receptiveness to nature with preserving the perceptiveness of childhood · Essay, Nature (1836)

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.6974 − 0.3103i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.6491 − 0.2702i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  3. Howard Phillips Lovecraft · −0.6963 − 0.2459i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.7095 − 0.3348i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Tallis · −0.6726 − 0.2339i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content