The soul gradually loses its consciousness of what is passing around it
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion (1839). copy citation

add
Author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source Hyperion
Topic consciousness soul
Date 1839
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5436/5436-h/5436-h.htm

Context

“No link is broken in the chain of being; any more than in passing from infancy to manhood, from manhood to old age. There are seasons of reverie and deep abstraction, which seem to me analogous to death. The soul gradually loses its consciousness of what is passing around it; and takes no longer cognizance of objects which are near. It seems for the moment to have dissolved its connexion with the body. It has passed as it were into another state of being. It lives in another world.” source