Potpourri Blog Post #1

The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy

 At first, I did not understand this poem very much, but after discussion and further analysis, I liked the poem a lot because there was more meaning in it than I had first thought. I believe that the overall message of the poem was that God, or fate, or some other supernatural power was punishing the human vanity that The Titanic embodied. The structure of the poem emphasizes this because the first two lines of every stanza have to do with the lavishness of the ship while it is above the ground. In lines 10 and 11, the "Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind" (Hardy) the glamorous side of the ship is described. But in the third line, those jewels and glory now "Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind" (Hardy). The third line is the longest and has to do with the life of the ship below the sea. This was the maiden voyage of The Titanic. It had not been around for very long before it was destroyed, so it's life above the sea was much shorter than it's eternal life under the sea. The poem is about the convergence of the two things--the iceberg and the titanic. The iceberg was put in place because of the human vanity that was exemplified in the ship. They came together because of fate and because that kind of vanity is not supposed to be present in our world today.