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The Convergence of the Twain: Lines on the loss of the "Titanic"
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Hap” by Thomas Hardy (1866)
In this early Hardy poem, we can see themes that would recur throughout his poetry. The speaker bemoans the “pain” (Line 14) of their life, wondering, “How arrives it joy lies slain, / And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?” (Lines 9-10). This contemplation of suffering echoes the subject matter of “The Convergence of the Twain,” in which a symbol of progress is destroyed by an iceberg shaped by an otherworldly force implied to be Fate’s vengeance.
“The Darkling Thrush” by Thomas Hardy (1900)
In one of Hardy’s most famous poems, the speaker surveys a bleak wintery landscape and feels its “growing gloom” (Line 24)—“The Century’s corpse outleant” (Line 10). Only the bird’s singing contains “some blessed Hope, whereof he knew / And I was unaware” (Lines 31-32). This negativity is echoed in “Convergence of the Twain,” which notes the same human blindness as “[n]o mortal eye could see / The intimate welding” (Lines 26-27) of the shipwreck.
“Where They Lived” by Thomas Hardy (1917)
This poem, published five years after “The Convergence of the Twain,” deals with another desolate landscape where living beings once were joined. The “summerhouse is gone” (Line 7) and its surrounding land is untended and overgrown. The same haunted quality marks the abandoned husk of the Titanic.
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817-1818)
Shelley was an acknowledged influence on Hardy. In this poem, Shelley’s speaker describes the remnants of a shattered statue that was once a tribute to “Ozymandias, King of Kings” (Line 10). However, although the inscription orders onlookers to regard him with fear and “despair” (Line 11), the statue is now a “colossal Wreck” (Line 13) in the middle of “lone and level sands” (Line 14)—all that remains of Ozymandias’s empire. “The Convergence of the Twain” similarly features the ruin of vanity, with the Titanic functioning as a fallen monument.
Further Literary Resources
“‘Convergence of the Twain’: Horace, Hardy, and the Jar of Influence” by Christopher Childers (2015)
This article addresses historical facts regarding the shipwreck and the poem that it inspired. Childers notes “the poem’s divergence from the rout of popular sentiment, its dark felicities of diction, its uncanny philosophical wavering between Fate and Randomness, and the psycho-sexual energy which seems an emanation of Hardy’s own unhappy marriage.” He then delves into Hardy’s interest in the Roman poet Horace, as well as his thematic focus on hybris and balance.
“Unsinkable” by David Mendelsohn (2012)
This long-form article for The New Yorker covers the history of the Titanic, including the function of the other ships in the area and the use of lifeboats. It shows how the shipwreck gained legendary status in the popular culture, appearing in accounts like A Night to Remember, poems, songs, novels, and movies. The shipwreck has now become a common metaphor, whether “it’s a parable about the scope, and limits, of technology [...] a morality tale about class, or a foreshadowing of the First World War—the marker of the end of a more innocent era [or] a screen on which early-twentieth-century society projected its anxieties about race, gender, class, and immigration.” Hardy uses the Titanic as a metaphor in a similar way.
“‘The Convergence of the Twain’ and Popular Sentiment” by Meredith Bergman (2012)
This article for Contemporary Poetry Review centers on public interest in the wreck. There were so many poems written in its aftermath that the New York Times noted on April 30, 1912 that further such works were not “worth printing.” Bergman notes that Hardy’s poem stands out from these. She then explores the psycho-sexual elements of the poem and Hardy’s speaker as “God the Architect.”
Listen to the Poem
English entertainer Whitcomb re-created the music played aboard the Titanic for James Cameron’s 1997 award-winning film. This recording comes from Whitcomb’s Titanic: Music as Heard on the Fateful Voyage, which won a Grammy in 1998 for Whitcomb’s liner notes.
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By Thomas Hardy
