POETRY ALERT

"I am standing upon a 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, and I stand and watch unitl at last she
hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea
and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then
someone at my side says, 'There she goes!'
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 just as able to bear her
load of living freight to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at
the moment when someone at my side says, 'There she
goes!' there are other eyes watching her coming and
their voices ready to take up the glad shouts 'Here
she comes!' "
- Henry Van Dyke, A Parable of Immortality