Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 13-15
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ...
- Aw, cute—moon-eyed fishes, gang. These guys have big peepers to help them see in the very little light that reaches the bottom of the ocean. And what do they spy? They're looking at all of the ship's glorious stuff and wondering what in the world it is. The speaker seems to be making the point that man's vanity is so far removed from nature that nature's creatures can't make sense of it. It all just looks like weird useless stuff.
- More specifically, the fishes think it's just a bunch of "vaingloriousness" (another way of saying vanity).
- This is also where we start seeing more of nature looking at man's vanity as a kind of strange artifact. The fish can't eat any of the "gilded gear," nor can they use it in any useful way, so it all just appears strange.
- The ending rhetorical question in line 15 emphasizes the speaker's ideas that make us wonder what the point of man's vanity really is. So far all of these things have no real purpose and are certainly of no use to the people who went down with the Titanic.
- So why do we bother to waste so much time building these things and convincing ourselves that they're valuable?