The Sailing Ship

Grandma and Grandpa Bingham both really liked this poem. It was read at both

 of their funerals by Uncle Paul.

The Sailing Ship

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean
blue.
She is the 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 the 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 and hull and spare 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 at my side 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.             

  --author unknown