Personification in The Convergence of the Twain

I'm sure Thomas Hardy wasn't the first and won't be the last poet to comment on the sinking of the Titanic. Most poems about tragedy take a somber tone, as does this one. But, what gives this poem life among the bleak tone is the personification of the items in the poem. He speaks of fish that swim the sea and "Gaze at the gilded gear And query: 'What does this vaingloriousness down here?'.  These fish wonder, as the rest of the world, how this mass got down there. He speaks of the ship and "A Shape of Ice" on a crash course for destiny that "jars both hemisphere". Although he sees the tragedy, he knows it is the will of the "Spinner of the Years" and on his command that this happened. Through making the Iceberg human, he is able to make it seem as if it was the destiny of both these behemoths to collide