"What is dying ...."

What is dying?   I am standing on the sea shore.  A ship sails and spreads her white 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 ad spars she was when I saw her … The diminished size and loss of sight is in me, not in her, and just at that 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’ …

Bishop Charles H Brent