Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 31-33
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
- But by this stanza, we get the feeling that maybe the speaker is thinking that there is some sort of master plan that's equipped with a Spinner of the Years. Maybe he's referring to a kind of divine providence that unifies all things and therefore "spins" the years as we go.
- So the spinner gives the final sign by line 32 that signals the big collision between these two alien halves. By then it's too late for either half to "hear" the signal, and the two are then consummated in tragic circumstances and brought together as one complete whole.
- This kind of stuff brings to mind Shakespeare and the ideas he usually worked with in plays like Romeo and Juliet, where two opposite but equal forces are "consummated" in tragedy.
- So our speaker isn't just working with ideas about a big boat that crashed. He's getting at some very old theories that have been around for as long as opposites have been around (a.k.a. forever).
- And since he uses the metaphor of the iceberg and Titanic being two "hemispheres," we feel even more the kind of universal vibe that the speaker is going with. It's as if the collision itself is a kind of metaphor for life's creative and destructive forces that are put forth via some "Immanent" force that unites all things. In the end though, it's still a big icy mystery.