(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 all this vainglorious-
ness 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 off and dis-
sociate.
VIII
And as the smart ship
grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Ice-
berg 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.
RMS Titanic departs Southampton on her maiden voyage.