The poem
(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")
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 fat 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.
hardy is explaining how in the face of nature vanity is gone and that vanity is worthless at the bottom of the sea , this poem also seems to explain that the sinking of the titanic was fate
He talks of predestined occurrance as if God had set this in motion to teach mankind a lesson.He compares this tradegy to marriage by saying that god was preparing a sinister mate for the titantic in the form of an Iceberg
The coming together of the ship and the iceburg, 'welding' only one letter from wedding.
The innocence is lost as the two collide.
Hardy's own loss of faith in God distances the tradgedy from an act of vengency by God, yet his mention of 'The Imminant will' show a belief in a fate which coincides with the notion that as if in order to restor balance the iceburg grew synonomosly. Likewise the use of the imagery that the two forms 'were bent by paths coincident'supports theinterpretatiom that as a a consquence of humanity's unrestriced and considered progress a force of nature is urged to counter this by fate.
Stanza VII should read "far and dissociate," NOT "fat and dissociate."
One of the comments refers to "Imminent Will," which is a mispelling of "Immanent Will," a mispelling that alters the meaning of the line. "Immanent Will" is Hardy's reference to a veangful divinity that frustrates human pretensions, the opposite of the Christian God. Such a negative concept of divinity was widespread at the time.
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