I am standing on the sea shore,
A ship sails in 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.

Bishop Charles Henry Brent (1862-1926)

In memory of Agnes Wilson, 16 November 1921 to 29 August 2015