Poem fractal

Qui Laborat, Orat

by Arthur Hugh Clough

1 January 1819 to 13 November 1861 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Still we may be well assured that only time can work out any sort of answer to them for us.”

Counselling patience when confronting profound moral and spiritual questions · Letter, March 1852

More remarks (7)

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. Matthew Arnold · −0.3354 − 0.1208i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.3267 − 0.1464i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Rose Benét · −0.3273 − 0.1524i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.3357 − 0.1109i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.3609 − 0.1425i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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