The Convergence of the Twain: Lines on the loss of the "Titanic"

“Convergence of the Twain” is a 33-line lyric poem divided into 11 three-line stanzas called tercets. The rhyme scheme is AAABBB, while the meter varies between an iambic pentameter (five sets of stressed-unstressed syllables) for the first two lines of each stanza, with an iambic hexameter (six sets of stressed-unstressed syllables) for the last. The rhythmic beat of the end rhymes mimics the ship cleaving through the water, while the lengthening of beats in the last line of the stanzas helps increase the solemn tone of the poem.

Christopher Childers has noted that “[t]he stanza/s looks remarkably like a boat, lying long and low in the water, with the Roman numerals sitting on top like smokestacks” (Childers, Christopher. “‘Convergence of the Twain’: Horace, Hardy, and the Jar of Influence.” Medium, 2015), depending on how the poem is printed.

The poem is organized into two parts. The first five stanzas describe the shipwreck and end with fish wondering how the ship came to be in their domain. The second part retells the story of the collision as an analogy—the doomed violent meeting of the female-coded ship and the male-coded iceberg.