The Convergence of the Twain
Lines on the Loss of the Titanic


By Thomas Hardy
April 24, 1912


In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, silly couches she.

Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents third, 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 bearded and black and blind.

Dim moon-eyed fished near
Gaze at the gilded gear,
And query: "What does this vain gloriousness 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 far 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.


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Many thanks to Susan D.
You can visit her homepage, where I got the poem from, at
http://www.angelfire.com/la/TitanicObsessed/
She was very kind in responding to an email I wrote her, asking to add the poem to my page. She said she didn't desearve the credit, and that Thomas Hardy did for writting the poem.