Poem fractal

It is Not Always May

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27 February 1807 to 24 March 1882 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The heart, like the mind, has a memory. And in it are kept the most precious keepsakes of the past.”

Describing memory as an inward treasury of emotional experience · Prose fiction

More remarks (4)

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. John Donne · −0.3380 − 0.4778i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Sara Teasdale · −0.3563 − 0.4892i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Grace Hazard Conkling · −0.3399 − 0.4827i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Maria White Lowell · −0.3382 − 0.4663i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  5. Bernard Barton · −0.3422 − 0.4595i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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