Technical Review of Thomas Hardy’s "The Convergence of the Twain – Lines on the Loss of the Titanic"

This poem examines the R.M.S. Titanic’s triumph while she sailed, the bleakness of her sunken remains, and the might of the iceberg that tore her apart.

The poem is broken into three line stanzas. Interestingly, Hardy aligns the first two lines of each stanza in the center above the third so that the stanza looks like a triangle. For instance:

(Underscores are spaces in the printed version)
________In a solitude of the sea
________Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planner her, stilly couches she.

The pattern might represent the Titanic, the tides that have flowed past her since she sunk in 1912, or the passenger’s view of the iceberg that sunk the ship. Either way, it creates a sonic ebb and flow when reading the poem. Also contributing to this flow is Hardy’s use of end rhyme, which he applies to all three lines in each stanza.

There is no consistent line length for first, second, and third lines in each stanza. Most stanzas in the poem, however, contain twenty-five or twenty-six syllables, and exhibit iambic behavior when read as a complete stanza, as opposed to line by line. Considering the use of lines as visual elements, this is a sensible approach to structuring each stanza. A few substitutions are allowed for long, descriptive words. This implies that vocabulary drove sections of the poem more than meter.

Hardy generates clear, cruel imagery in the readers mind when describing the ship’s rotting, cold carcass that lies on the bottom of the sea. Of particular note is the following passage:

______Over the mirrors meant
______To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls-grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Thomas Hardy’s examination of the R.M.S. Titanic demonstrates the effectiveness of carefully structured verse in transporting a reader directly to a different time and place.