What is dying? I am standing on the sea shore. A ship sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. She is an object of beauty and I stand watching her till at last she fades on the horizon, and someone at my side says, "She is gone." Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all; she is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her; and just at the moment when someone at my side says, "She is gone," there are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout, "there she comes" – and that is dying.
-- attributed to Henry Van Dyke under the title "A Parable to Immortality" and also to Bishop Brent from All in the End is Harvest: An anthology for those who grieve, edited by Agnes Whitake
(see http://www.gavroche.org/vhugo/toilersdeath.shtml for exploration of the authorship)
#2811
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
3 comments:
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This is my most favorite poem for giving sympathy and this is where I first found it at St.Catherine's
ReplyDeleteLibrary in a sympathy card. I bought it for years.
It has a sailboat on it near a shoreline with a couple of boulders on it and the horizon in the
distance. The title is "Life is Eternal". It is now out of print and I greedily keep this last card. It starts out "She is an object of beauty and strength and 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-----continues on and ends up
with "There she comes".
Thank you for printing this because I have never seen it before or knew who might be credited for it.
It is peaceful. I sent it to a collegue when his
parent died and he liked it so much, and when he died his wife had it read at his funeral service.
(Phyllis)
This reminds me of Sound Bites #466, which I have taped to the inside cover of my Bible: "...death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing more than the limit of our sight".
ReplyDeleteThanks for todays' quote and all of your work!
Pete Evangelista, Ohio
Thank you soooooooooooo much!
ReplyDeleteThat means forever!
Love,
Eileen Clark