A Poem to Share

In an earlier blog, Unnecessary Details, I promised to share a poem about dying. This poem, Gone From My Sight, is, according to Google, often misattributed to Henry Van Dyke. It was, Google says, more likely written by Rev. Luther F. Beecher in the late 19th or early 20th century.

Either way, we are invited to see the metaphor of a ship disappearing from view, as simply a shift in our sensory perception. Just as in dying our loved ones appear to be leaving us, diminishing in size, or life force, they are not actually diminished. They remain whole just beyond our perception. Here is the poem. I hope it lends you a different perspective.

The light in me honors the light in you. 

Gone From My Sight By Rev Luther F. Beecher

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,

spreads her white sails to the moving 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,

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 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…