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 demeanor, 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 phantasies 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 labors 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 regularity—although 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 faultless—how 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 nose—and 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
      heavenly—the magnificent turn of the short upper lip—the soft,
      voluptuous slumber of the under—the dimples which sported, and
      the color which spoke—the 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 scrutinized the formation of the chin—and here, too, I
      found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty,
      the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek—the 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 of the valley
      of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals—in moments of intense
      excitement—that this peculiarity became more than slightly
      noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was her beauty—in my
      heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps—the beauty of beings either
      above or apart from the earth—the beauty of the fabulous Houri of
      the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black,
      and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows,
      slightly irregular in outline, had the same tint. The
      “strangeness,” however, which I found in the eyes, was of a
      nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the
      brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to
      the expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast
      latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of
      the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long
      hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a
      midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it—that
      something more profound than the well of Democritus—which lay far
      within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed
      with a passion to discover. Those eyes! those large, those
      shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda,
      and I to them devoutest of astrologers. There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of
      the science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the
      fact—never, I believe, noticed in the schools—that, in our
      endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often
      find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being
      able, in the end, to remember. And thus how frequently, in my
      intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes, have I felt approaching the
      full knowledge of their expression—felt it approaching—yet not
      quite be mine—and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh
      strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of
      the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I mean to
      say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia’s beauty passed
      into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from
      many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt
      always aroused within me by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not
      the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even
      steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in
      the survey of a rapidly-growing vine—in the contemplation of a
      moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have
      felt it in the ocean—in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it
      in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two
      stars in heaven—(one especially, a star of the sixth magnitude,
      double and changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra)
      in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the
      feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from
      stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from
      books. Among innumerable other instances, I well remember
      something in a volume of Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely
      from its quaintness—who shall say?) never failed to inspire me
      with the sentiment: “And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is
      but a great will pervading all things by nature of its
      intentness.