![]() ![]() This suggests that, as we bid farewell to the dying body of a loved one, we welcome them into the richness of our living memory - not diminished but transfigured into an undying, ancestral story. Remembering her stature, strength and beauty, the narrator retains the memory of her as she was. The narrator’s acknowledgement that the ship is diminished only by perspective opens the possibility of seeing her with the same eyes as those who are watching from the opposite shore. However, there is another feasible reading of the poem that offers another meaning and a different relationship between death, loss and memory. Within this context, the poem loses its meaning for those who don’t believe in life or consciousness after bodily death. This interpretation requires the reader to accept the concept of heaven or an “otherworld” in order to gain comfort from the poem. Van Dyke was the son of a Presbyterian minister, so it is easy to assume that he had some sort of ancestral heaven in mind when he imagined the “other eyes… and other voices” waiting to greet the ship as she arrived on a distant, invisible shore. Ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!” ![]() There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ![]() Thus the ship remains strong and able, carrying precious cargo safety to its destination.Īnd, just at the moment when someone says, “There, she is gone,” Her diminished size is in me - not in her. Hull and spar as she was when she left my side.Īnd, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Then, someone at my side says, “There, she is gone. Not being diminished in any way except by the narrator’s own perspective, she slowly disappears. Of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck Van Dyke refers to it as female if the ship were human, she would be the very picture of health and vitality. The object of the poem, the ship, is introduced here as strong and beautiful. Spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and startsįor the blue ocean. ![]()
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