Infants Remembered In Silence (IRIS) - Poems

Gone From My Sight

By Henry Van Dyke

In memory of Cameron Bailey Entered into Heaven Tuesday, July 16, 2002 at 12 gestational weeks.

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 the
sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says:
“There, she is gone!”
“Gone where?”
“Gone from my sight. This 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 as 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.

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