A Poem

The Convergence of the Twain 

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Author

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 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 bleared and black and blind. 

Dim moon-eyed fishes near

The daintly gilded gear

Gaze querying: "What does all this sumptuousness down here?"

Well: while was fascinating

This ship of swiftest 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 statute, 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!" The which each hears, 

And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.