What Is Dying?

What is dying?

I am standing on the seashore.
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 she left my side.
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!"

That is what dying is.
A horizon and just the limit of our sight.