The Convergence of the Twain

It is strange what research throws up when you let yourself follow a curving line, isn't it? (I know, it could be called a MAT, but I don't think it counts.)

I was looking for information about icebergs, when this caught my eye and so I veered off course towards it. Hardy wrote it in 1912, that ill-fated year for an apparently unsinkable ship and her passengers:

The Convergence of the Twain
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.