I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side
spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and
starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of
beauty and strength. I stand watch her at length until
she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the
sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says:
“There, she is gone!”
“Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in
mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my
side and she is just as able to bear her load of living
freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just
at the moment when someone at my side says:
“There, she is gone!”
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
“Here she comes!”
And, that is dying.
- Henry Van Dyke
