Wednesday Poetry: "The Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the Loss of the 'Titanic')"

Two Thomas Hardy poems in a row, but consider last week as an introduction to this one. Thomas Hardy wrote this particular poem upon learning about the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic because of its famous iceberg collision on 14 April 1912. On the 98th anniversary of the Titanic catastrophe, I felt that this poem had a particular resonance and ought to be shared.

"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 third, 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.

Wednesday Poetry: "The Voice," by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was best known as a novelist, but he wrote those only to make his living. During the last three decades of his life, he turned himself to his true passion, poetry. Hardy claims, "My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own."

"The Voice"
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.