The universal practice of closing the eyes of the dead may be thought to have originated in the desire that he might be prevented from seeing his way.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In medicine as well as in romantic poetry, it is the heart that is the center and controlling mechanics of life. If the heart stops, life stops. The loss of sight doesn't not mean death. Yet for ages, the eyes was believed to contain a human being's vital essence - a not wholly irrational belief.
The approach of death certainly concentrates the mind.
To die is as if one's eyes had been put out and one cannot see anything any more. Perhaps it is like being shut in a cellar. One is abandoned by all. They have slammed the door and are gone. One does not see anything and notices only the damp smell of putrefaction.
My grandfather taught me how important it is to have your eyes open, because you never know what's going to come your way.
Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
I don't like it when people don't look me dead in the eye. I move my head around trying to catch their eye.
When I'm writing the poem, I feel like I have to close my eyes. I don't mean literally, but you invite a kind of blindness, and that's the birth of the poem.
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.
Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.
If we can't face death, we'll never overcome it. You have to look it straight in the eye. Then you can turn around and walk back out into the light.