looking for the poem about dying compared to a ship setting sail?

Answer 1

Perhaps it's this piece:

Henry van Dyke: “A Parable of Immortality”:

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, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, "There she goes!"

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 just as able to bear her load of living freight to the places of destination.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There she goes!”, there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

Answer 2

O Captain My Captain by Walt Whitman?

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart! 5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

2

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck, 15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

3

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Answer 3

Look into Lermontov's poems. I only know them in Russian, but many of them are kind of like that.

Answer 4

Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar", perhaps.

Answer 5

not sure about this one, maybe one of these?

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1112.html

there's sailing to byzantium
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/21.html