Poem fractal

To the Fringed Gentian

by William Cullen Bryant

3 November 1794 to 12 June 1878 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth in her fair page.”

On nature as a source of moral and spiritual insight · From The Ages

More remarks (68)

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4114 − 0.5126i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Sharp · −0.4173 − 0.5260i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emma Lazarus · −0.4231 − 0.5165i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Hardy · −0.4119 − 0.4944i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Amy Lowell · −0.4052 − 0.5348i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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