Rhymed Stanzas (Without Chest Pounding)
As much as we'd love to imagine Hardy's speaker pounding his chest alongside Celine Dion, we'll have to settle for a simple rhymed stanza instead. "The Convergence of the Twain" is neatly organized into 11 stanzas, with three lines each that share a similar rhyme scheme of AAA. That means that each stanza contains three consecutive end rhymes. That helps to mimics the tide with a predictable wave of returning sounds.
Form-wise, we get two short lines in each stanza, followed by a longer line. The short lines set the scene for the speaker's realization, which comes in the longer line. Check it out:
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything (16-18)
We're introduced to the effects of this Immanent Will, and then in the longer line introduced to the concept of this big, invisible force just doing whatever it wants to anything and everyone. Interestingly enough, the poem itself discusses two concepts (man's plans, work, and vanity versus nature's sheer power) and then goes on to make a longer realization about their interaction (long story short, don't go messing with Mother Nature). In this way, the stanzas are organized in the same way that the poem as a whole takes shape. Neat, eh?
Finally, a word about the meter at work in this poem: it pretty much doesn't exist. There may be some coincidental rhythms among the shorter lines, but nothing regular enough to be called a formal meter. The randomness that the natural world imposes on man's plans and possessions is carried out in the irregular beats of each line.