RMS Titanic* has always been an interest of mine; when I was in 7th grade I read Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember and was fascinated by the story of this “unsinkable” ship that had met it’s end during it’s maiden voyage. When I was a teenager, Bob Ballard discovered her final resting place, and it seemed like virtually overnight the market was flooded with books on the*Titanic. *I probably read most, if not all of them. Of these books, my favorite was Her Name, Titanic by Charles Pellegrino.

I’ve seen the traveling *RMS Titanic *exhibit three separate times now, and each time I’m awed and amazed by the artifacts. I’m not sure what it is, but there is something about the ship that gives me a catch in the throat when I view the bits and pieces salvaged from her wreckage.  I took the family to see the exhibit the last time, and watched as they - if only for a brief time - fell under her spell.

With the re-release of the 1997 movie, *Titanic *has been surfacing in the public conscience again. In that spirit, today I offer Thomas Hardy’s lines on the disaster.

The Convergence of the Twain #

(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 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.

–Thomas Hardy