Convergence Of The Twain - Thomas Hardy

A new series about the sinking of the Titanic is being produced by Julian Fellowes, writer of Downton Abbey and hankerer after the good old days of the age of deference when the likes of us knew our places. He thinks the Titanic movies got it wrong. All those poor people being left to drown - couldn't happen, could it? Here's a better version than his or Hollywood's by a proper writer.

(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 fish

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.