“The Convergence of the Twain” begins at the end of its own story, with the Titanic sunk at the bottom of the ocean. There, distant from the pride which lead to the creation of the ship, “she” rests, her fires extinguished by the cold ocean water. Her stores of luxury goods are left to molder in the dark. When the fish encounter the ship, they wonder how such a proud thing came to sink to the bottom of the sea. The speaker answers that fate created both the ship and the iceberg at the same time. Thus, although people imagined that they were building a miracle of engineering, they were actually just working within a greater plan, one that doomed the Titanic to sink. Even when the two seemed completely separate from one another, the immortal eye of fate knew that the Titanic would sink. At the end of the poem, that prediction becomes reality as the whole world is jolted by the inevitable collision.
The Convergence of the Twain
by Thomas Hardy
