Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 4-6
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
- What the what? Vocab much, Mr. Hardy? Don't stress, y'all. We'll walk you through this.
- So by the second stanza the speaker brings us into the actual parts of the ship that are at the bottom of the sea. We see some steel chambers first that would've presumably been used to heat the ship, but here those "pyres" (stuff to burn) are late, meaning they missed the boat, so to speak.
- So those fires that would've been burning were "salamandrine." In ancient myth, salamanders were thought to be little fire beasts, immune to flame. "Salamandrine" just mean that these were epic fires, but now… not so much. Can't light a fire in the water, right?
- Notice how the speaker is blending the parts of the ship and their intended purposes in this highly aquatic setting, which makes those parts appear totally useless.
- Now, what's a "third"? Thrid is just an old fashioned word for passing through something. So those currents are passing through all of the Titanic's stuff.
- Instead of fires, we have "cold currents" that turn like the rhythmic sounds of a lyre (a stringed instrument common in Greek myths). Again, this is figurative language, so we have to use our imaginations a bit. Imagine the sound of the sea underwater and how it might sound like a soothing instrument. That's the kind of aural imagery the speaker wants us to hear.
- So although it's kinda sad that those parts are going unused, we feel a kind of mysterious beauty here in the sea that's making the ship a part of the aquatic setting.
- We also have another perfect rhyme in this stanza: "pyres," "fires," "lyres." So the speaker is being consistent so far in keeping a prescribed rhyme for each stanza, which gives the poem a kind of wavelike rhythm. Check out "Form and Meter" for more.