The Horizon

I am standing upon the seashore
A ship at my side spreads her white salts 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 on the horizon,
just where the sea and the sky come to mingle with one another.
Then, someone at my ride 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 ride,
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
Ride 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.