The Convergence of the Twain

"The Convergence of the Twain" is about the event made famous for us in the movie Titanic. Focus on the way the events unfold in the poem, and try to articulate the point the poem makes about it.

This poem is beautifully worded. The style is different, simpler than the other poems we’ve read from Hardy. The image presented is that of the Titanic being almost not savaged as much as artistically and naturally overtaken by the sea, like it was being accepted into this different world. The idea Hardy wants us to see is that even this was supposed to happen. That the moment this ship came into creation, it's companion iceberg was already out there somewhere, waiting.

“Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent will that stir and urges everything

Prepared a sinister mate
For her- So gaily great-
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.”

The Ruined Maid

"The Ruined Maid" isn't on the Schedule, but I think some might want to respond to it. What is the poem's attitude toward the "ruined" Amelia--"ruined" meaning that she's a prostitute.

The attitude toward prostitution doesn’t seem a bad one. The primary speaker talks about Amelia’s changes for the better, how Amelia dresses more fashionably, speaker properly, even her skin and hands are finer, softer and her attitude is even brighter. The speaker, Amelia’s old friend even comments on how she wishes she could be like Amelia and have these nice things, but Amelia tells her, “My dear- A raw country girl, such as you be,//Cannot quite expect that. You ain’t ruined.” I feel that Amelia doesn’t want the two lives to cross. Her answers are simple, all saying that she’s “ruined” without further discussion. Her friend, the speaker doesn’t seem to quite understand this, only seeing her for her finery. The speaker accepts her and almost seems in awe.

The Darkling Thrush

As the note to "The Darkling Thrush" points out, the poem was written (or at least dated) on the eve of the 20th century. As with "Neutral Tones," focus in your response to this on the speaker's tone as it is reflected in the imagery, paying particular attention to the description of the thrush (a type of bird).

Here it is winter. Our speaker is leaning on a gate in a forested place, seemingly alone, checking out nature around him. He compares the landscape to the ending century, “The land’s sharp features seemed to be//The Century’s corpse outleant” Which is a scary image, a corpse leaning out of its coffin. Maybe as though it was watching its final moments pass by. The whole night seems to be as lacking in zeal as the speaker, or so he thinks, “And every spirit upon earth//Seemed fervourless as I.” Then comes the thrush. In all this drabness, the thrust is this sudden sort of jolt of joy.

“At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illuminated”

Though the thrush is not a young and fresh creature, but “aged… frail, gaunt, and small” so it doesn’t represent the newness of the coming century. I’d say that his song was the possibility of hope for something new and incredible in the future.

“That I could think there trembled through,
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.”

What did you think of the poem?

Neutral Tones

I (and others) find "Neutral Tones" to be the bitterest poem in the English language. Focus in your response to this mainly on the speaker's tone and on how it is reflected in the imagery.
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At first I thought the term was bittersweet, but no, bitter is fitting with this poem. The speaker is one of a pair, likely lovers considering the final stanza. The speaker is recalling this scene, this lover, though he admits that other happenings have colored the memories since these events.

"Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves."

The poem is set in winter, which can be beautiful, but is not described as such here. Where the sun could have been white like fresh snow or something pleasant, it’s instead “white, as though chidden of God” the grass if “starving sod” the leaves were “from an ash, and gray” which I feel was just to heighten the drabness of this scene. It’s richly drab if that’s anything. Even the way his lover looks at him. “Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove//Over tedious riddles of years ago” Where she is obviously studying him, he gives the image age and a sort of boredom or tedious nature. One would eventually get bored of studying ancient riddles or at least tire of it. Even her smile and grin were remembered foully. Her smile was “the deadest thing//Alive enough to have strength to die” then her grin was “a grin of bitterness thereby//Like an ominous bird a-wing.” One wonders if this was a foul and dark memory before the pair obviously turned out poorly with hatred at least from his side.

Hap

In explicating "Hap," focus on the ways in which it represents what I say above about Hardy's view of the world being ruled only by happenstance, chance, and situational irony.

The whole poem is about chance, that being the meaning of its name even. The speaker is unhappy due to some sort of misfortune in chance. In the first stanza, he says that if a “vengeful god” would just tell him that “thy sorrow is [my] ecstacy” that this god might take some joy from the speaker’s own pain, then he could bear the hard, being “Half-eased in that a Powerfuller then I//Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.” Meaning that he could then bear it because it meant that someone had gotten pleasure from his sorrow. However, he then says that this is not so. He doesn’t believe that he has been given his lot by gods, but by time and chance and that “The purblind Doomsters had as readily strown//Blisses about my pilgramage as pain.” Which leads him to believe that his bad times could have just as easily been good times, but for the matter of chance.

What stood out the most for you?