Joseph Glanvill. I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the
Lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or,
perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her
rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her
low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily progressive,
that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe that I met her first and most frequently in
some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine. Of her familyI have surely heard her speak. That it
is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more
than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word aloneby
Ligeiathat I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. And now, while I write,
a recollection flashes upon me that I have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend
and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my bosom. Was
it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should
institute no inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my owna wildly romantic offering on
the shrine of the most passionate devotion? I but indistinctly recall the fact itself what wonder that I
have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it? And, indeed, if ever that spirit
which is entitled Romance if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt,
presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine.
There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In stature
she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray
the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanour, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her
footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed
study, save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder.
In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream an airy and
spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of
the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely
taught to worship in the classical labours of the heathen. There is no exquisite beauty, says Bacon,
Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, without some strangeness in the
proportion. Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularityalthough I
perceived that her loveliness was indeed exquisite, and felt that there was much of strangeness pervading
it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of the strange.
I examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead it was faultlesshow cold indeed that word
when applied to a majesty so divine!the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and
repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy,
the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet, hyacinthine!
I looked at the delicate outlines of the noseand nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews
had I beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely
perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I
regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenlythe magnificent turn
of the short upper lipthe soft, voluptuous slumber of the underthe dimples which sported, and the
colour which spokethe teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy light
which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinised the
formation of the chinand here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty,
the fulness and the spirituality, of the Greekthe contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream,
to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been, too, that in these eyes of my
beloved lay the secret to which Lord Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the
ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe |