Henry Van Dyke: Her diminished size is in me, not in her

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 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 (1852-1933)

If you know the source of this quotation, please let me know.

Comments

[jasper]

This is one of the nicest poems on the topic that I have ever read.

[ian waddell]

hi,

i just wanted to say thanks for your site.
i was looking for readings for the funeral of someone close. so many of the readings online were not quite right, maybe mawkish. this was the most literate, and helpful, of all the sites i found: thanks for the care you've put in to the translation and the selection of these readings.

though it is still hard to find words that do justice to grief.

many thanks,
ian

[Donna Viscardo]

This is the most comforting poem I have ever read. I read in the week prior to my husband's death several times a day, to give me strength, and I also read it at his funeral mass. Although it is 9 years since he has passed, I still find comfort in reading it, and I've passed it on to a dear friend who just lost a family member. Although I am in a different place now, it still has the same peaceful effect on my soul...