Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
It is also possible that Hardy, who aspired to become an architect but lacked the resources to do so, criticizes what to him seem the unnecessary pursuits of wealthy people, epitomized in the building of such an enormous luxury vessel.
Seen as the epitome of Britain's wealth and power, the Titanic was extravagantly appointed for the British and American rich, and exhibited the new technology and fashions of the day.
Critic Peter Childs describes the Titanic as "full of Edwardian confidence but bound for disaster"[6] and it is this display of vanity and pride that Hardy sardonically highlights in the first five stanzas, as he contrasts the ship's current position at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to its glorious construction and launch.
By juxtaposing expensive items like the "jewels in joy designed" with their sea-bed position where they "lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind" (IV, 12), Hardy emphasises the immense waste caused by the sinking.
Whilst critic Chris Baldick claims Hardy's poem "alludes to a philosophical stance" and that it "carefully refrains from moralizing", fellow critic Donald Davie claims the poem "very markedly censures the vanity and luxury which created and inhabited the staterooms of the ocean liner", therefore suggesting Hardy does moralize.
Simon Armitage also wrote a poem called "The Convergence of the Twain", mimicking Hardy's style, but describing the events of 9/11.
In 2012 composer James Burton conducted the world premiere[10] of his new composition The Convergence of the Twain, a setting of the Hardy poem, at the St Endellion Music Festivals in Cornwall, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.