A Poem to Change Your Perspective on Death

Alissa Rubin
The Rubin Nonfiction Depository
1 min readNov 24, 2018

I Am Standing Upon The Seashore

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails 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 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
and 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 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.

– Henry Van Dyke

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Alissa Rubin
The Rubin Nonfiction Depository

Designing for maximum good. Service, UX, and product design in the US.