Thomas Hardy & The Convergence of the Twain

In the early hours of 15 April 1912, the Titanic sank after striking an iceberg. The news shocked everyone as the ship was supposed to be unsinkable. The great vessel had been seen as the epitome of Britain’s wealth and power.

Thomas Hardy was moved to write a poem on the occasion. Instead of focussing on the chaos and the loss, he instead chose to write of the ship and the iceberg, and their fateful meeting. The poem, The Convergence of the Twain: (Lines on the Loss of the ‘Titanic’), was published that same year.

The Convergence of the Twain: (Lines on the Loss of the ‘Titanic’) by Thomas Hardy

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

II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” …

VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her — so gaily great —
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX
Alien they seemed to be;
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,

X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

It has remained one of his more controversial poems. He appears to be contrasting the pride and vanity of mankind, represented by the ship, with the harshness and beauty of nature. The poem is notably missing in compassion, or even any reference to the loss of life (approximately 1,500 people died). In the first five stanza the opulence of the ship is now gazed on by fishes at the bottom of the ocean, and there is an emphasis on the terrible waste of jewels and lavish furnishings.

In the sixth stanza there’s a shift as Hardy moves to looking at the cause of the disaster. He links ship and iceberg as the ‘Twain’, implying that the convergence of the two was predestined (Hardy was always a great believer in Fate). The convergence almost seems to have been an unavoidable event caused by some uncontrollable force (i.e. ‘The Imminent Will’, the ‘Spinner of Years’ etc). Human technology is seen as powerless when pitted against the forces of nature.

The poem offers no comfort or anyone to blame for the tragedy, but rather it leaves the reader with a strong sense of human insignificance. There is no compassion or kindness to be found in nature.

The stanzas with their long third lines, are almost shaped like the ship and the iceberg, with more below the surface than above. There is a definite separation between the stanzas, which are numbered, again stressing the idea of separate things that will be brought together by fate.

The poem inspired a musical work by composer James Burton, composed in 2012. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has written a poem with the same title, in which he mimics Hardy’s style while describing the events of 9/11. You can listen to it, read by Ben Smith here: