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 third, 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 bearded and black and blind.
Dim moon-eyed fished near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vain gloriousness 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.
