(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")

In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"…

Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

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

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

Alien they seemed to be;
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,

Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

The wind came crying from the East; 
And blew the churchyard-grass aside 
As if to read forgotten names, 
It tossed the very altar-flames, 
And like a mourning woman cried, 
Whose sorrow will not be denied: 
Then in the sea-caves sank and ceased. 

The wind came singing from the West; 
And through the formal gardens ranged, 
And suddenly they all were changed. 
He entered in the rose's breast,
Like any bee, and, murmuring there, 
Sent a new music through the air: 
Then, in mid-sweetness, fell to rest. 

The wind came shouting from the North; 
As some armed warrior might come forth 
Eager to slay, or to be slain. 
He tore the last leaves from the tree 
And sped them shuddering o'er the plain; 
He called to heel the angry sea, 
And lashed it with his scourge of rain. 

The wind came sighing from the South, 
His hair a cloud, a rose his mouth; 
His eyes beneath the level brows 
Were shadowy as forest boughs; 
His voice was like a song one hears 
In childhood, lost for many years. 
Heard first with laughter, last with tears.