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PARTISAN REVIEW
marvel of both modern shipbuilding and ostentatiousness. However, no
less than in the ship, our poet seems to be interested in the iceberg. And
it is the iceberg's generic - triangular - shape that informs the poem's
stanzaic design. So does "A Shape of Ice" 's animate nature vis-a-vis the
poem's content.
At the same time, it should be noted, the triangular shape suggests
the ship: by alluding to the standard representation of a sail. Also, given
our poet's architectural past, this shape could connote for him an eccle–
siastical edifice or a pyramid. (After all, every tragedy presents a riddle.)
In verse, the foundation of such a pyramid would be hexameter, whose
caesura divides its six feet into even threes: practically the longest meter
available, and one Mr. Hardy was particularly fond of, perhaps because
he taught himself Greek.
Although his fondness for figurative verse (which comes to us from
Greek poetry of the Alexandrian period) shouldn't be overstated, his en–
terprise with stanzaic patterns was great enough to make him sufficiently
self- conscious about the visual dimension of his poems to make such a
move. In any case, the stanzaic design of "The Convergence of the
Twain" is clearly deliberate, as two trimeters and one hexameter
(normally conveyed in English precisely by two trimeters - also the con–
vergence of a twain) show, held together by the triple rhyme.
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent,
The sea-worm crawls - grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent
IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
