Poem fractal

The Golden Mile-Stone

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27 February 1807 to 24 March 1882 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The human voice is the organ of the soul; the organs of the body are merely instruments.”

Linking speech with inner life and treating the body as its expressive instrument · 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. Dylan Thomas · −0.3321 − 0.2165i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Susan Coolidge · −0.3157 − 0.2046i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alexander Anderson · −0.3188 − 0.1911i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sir Robert Ayton · −0.3471 − 0.2292i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. A. A. Milne · −0.3042 − 0.1913i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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