Poem fractal

The Meeting

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27 February 1807 to 24 March 1882 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.”

Recognising that completion requires a distinct form of discipline and judgement · Journal or prose remark, as commonly attributed

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. Letitia Elizabeth Landon · 0.0059 − 0.7120i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. Rupert Brooke · 0.0027 − 0.7048i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. Carl Sandburg · −0.0027 − 0.7301i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Edmondstoune Aytoun · 0.0215 − 0.7045i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. George Orwell · −0.0060 − 0.6941i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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