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 and watch her until
at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with
ach 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 the 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
 American poet

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