"But why shall I minutely detail the unspeakable horrors of that night?.... Let me hurry to a conclusion." 
 This is at the end of the story, and he's already missed his opportunity to hurry anything. As for minute details, try this on for size: 
 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 eves 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. 
 Geez Louise, dude. That's 553 words devoted to her face, 301 for the eyes alone. And I left out some of the other description preceding this section! But I bitch enough about this kind of thing in my 'Berenice' review, so I'll skip it here. 
 The story was good, but it's dated. That tends to happen when a story's been around for 179 years, though, so I won't hold the fact that I saw the ending coming from a million miles away against Poe. He was one of the first to do this kind of thing, so it was cutting edge back in the day. (view spoiler)[Dope fiend dude marries the hottest hottie around who is also very smart and into weird mystic shit. She dies. He gets sad. He marries another girl, but neglects her. She dies a month later. He wraps her up and keeps vigil. The body stirs, settles back to death, this repeats many times, then up she gets and the body has transformed into the first woman. (hide spoiler)] 
 This story was better than a lot of the others I've read (about ten so far), but I'm starting to see a lot of similarities between his tales. A friend told me Poe really just wrote the same four or five stories over and over again. It might not be as bad as all that, but I can see where he's coming from. Maybe there's a reason about only half a dozen are constantly recommended and the rest remain forgotten. I think this one is worth putting in a Poe sampler, not that I've read enough of them yet to be an authority on the matter.