Poem fractal

Concord Hymn

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 May 1803 to 27 April 1882 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.”

Presents individual consciousness as participating in a larger universal mind · Essay, History (1841)

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. Edgar A. Guest · −0.1094 − 0.3973i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Schwenck Gilbert · −0.1277 − 0.3906i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Wordsworth · −0.0921 − 0.3808i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Clare · −0.0843 − 0.3733i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Oscar Wilde · −0.1153 − 0.3550i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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