Convergence of the Twain

It's my turn to post a poem, dear readers, but at the moment I don't have a suitable one written. Also, Camille and I ran across a truly amazing poem in British Literature class this afternoon. In combination of these two factors, what I'm going to share with you today is not original material; rather, it's far better than anything I could do. It was written by Thomas Hardy, an English poet and novelist who died in 1928. You can read more about him here.

Before I give you the poem, I think it will be helpful to understand what's going on in the first five stanzas (at least, it was for me). As we learned this afternoon, Hardy is describing the wreck of the Titanic lying at the bottom of the sea. He then switches to telling about its earlier existence. And now for the poem...

Convergence of the Twain

In a solitude of the sea, 

Deep from human vanity,

And the Pride of Life that planned her stilly couches she.

Steel chambers late the pyres 

Of her salamandrine fires,

Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

Over the mirrors meant

To glass the opulent

The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Jewels in joy designed

To ravish the sensuous mind

Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

Dim moon-eyed fishes near

Gaze at the gilded gear

And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"

Well: while was fashioning

This creature of cleaving wing

The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

Prepared a sinister mate

For her—so gaily great—

A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.

And as the smart ship grew

In stature, grace, and hue,

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

Alien they seemed to be.

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history.

Or sign that they were bent

By paths coincident

On being anon twin halves of one august event,

Till the Spinner of the Years

Said 'Now!' And each one hears,

And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.


Thomas Hardy, 1915