menu_book Chapter 9

and the will therein lieth which dieth not who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigour for god is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness man doth not yield himself to the angels nor unto death utterly save only through the weakness of his feeble will joseph i cannot for my soul remember how when or even precisely where i first became acquainted with the lady lygea 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 family i have surely heard her speak that it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted lygea lygea in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world it is by that sweet word alone by lygea that i bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more and now while i write a recollection 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 lygea 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 own a 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 she the wan and misty winged ashtophet of idolatrous egypt presided as they tell over marriages ill-almonded then most surely she presided over mine there is one dear topic however on which my memory falls me not it is the person of lygea in stature she was tall somewhat slender and in her latter days even emaciated i would in vain attempt to betray 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 close 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 vision 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 lygea 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 thin 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 the 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 light which fell upon them in her serene and placid yet most exultingly radiant of 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 days 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 nur 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 hurry 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 on outline had the same tint the strangeness however which i found in the eyes was of a nature distinct from the formation or the colour or the brilliancy of the features and must after all be referred to in the expression

ah word of no meaning behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we entrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual the expression of the eyes of ligeia how for long hours i have pondered upon it how have i through the whole of the 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 endeavours 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 o 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 their 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 nor analyse nor even steadily view it i recognised 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 glanville 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 vigour for god is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness man doth not yield him to the angels nor unto death utterly save only through the weakness of his feeble will length of years and subsequent reflection have enabled me to trace indeed some remote connection between this passage in the english moralist and a portion of the character of lygia an intensity in thought action or speech was possibly in her a result or at least an index of that gigantic volition which during our long intercourse failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence

of all the women whom i have ever known she the outwardly calm the ever placid lygia was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion and of such passion i could form no estimate save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me by the almost magical melody modulation distinctness and placidity of her very low voice and by the fierce energy rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance of the wild words which she habitually uttered i have spoken of the learning of lygia it was immense such as i have never known in woman in the classical tongues she was deeply proficient and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the modern dialects of europe i have never known her at fault indeed upon any theme of the most admired because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the academy have i ever found lygia at fault how singularly how thrillingly this one point in the nature of my wife has forced itself

at this late period only upon my attention i said her knowledge was such as i have never known in woman but where breathed the man who has traversed and successfully all the wide areas of moral physical and mathematical science i saw not then what i now clearly perceive that the acquisitions of lygia were gigantic were astounding yet i was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself with a childlike confidence to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which i was most busily occupied during the earlier years of our marriage with how vast a triumph with how vivid a delight with how much of all that is ethereal in hope did i feel as she bent over me in studies but little sought but less known that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before me down those long gorgeous and all untrodden paths i might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden how poignant then must have been the grief with which after some years i beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves and fly away

without lygia i was but as a child groping benighted her presence her readings alone rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed wanting the radiant lustre of her eyes letters lambent and golden grew duller than saturnian lead and now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over which i poured lygia grew ill the wild eyes blazed with a too too glorious effulgence the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave and the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the gentle emotion i saw that she must die and struggled desperately in spirit with the grim asriel and the struggles of the passionate wife were to my astonishment even more energetic than my own there had been much in her stern nature to impress me with belief that to her death would have come without its terrors but not so words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled with the shadow

i groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle i would have soothed i would have reasoned but in the intensity of her wild desire for life for life but for life solace and reason were the uttermost folly yet not until the last instance amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor her voice grew more gentle grew more low yet i would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning of the quietly uttered words my brain reeled as i hearkened entranced to a melody more than mortal to assumptions and aspirations which mortality had never before known that she loved me i should not have doubted and i might have been easily aware that in a bosom such as hers love would have reigned no ordinary passion but in death only was i fully impressed with the strength of her affection for long hours detaining my hand would she pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry

how had i deserved to be so blessed by such confessions how had i deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the hour of her making them but upon this subject i cannot bear to dilate let me say only that in lygia's more than womanly abandonment to a love alas all unmerited all unworthily bestowed i at length recognized the principle of her longing with so wildly earnest a desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away it is this wild longing it is this eager vehemence of desire for life but for life that i have no power to portray no utterance capable of expressing at high noon of the night in which she departed beckoning me peremptorily to her side she bade me repeat certain verses composed by herself not many days before i obeyed her they were these lo tis a gala night within the lonesome latter years an angel throng bewinged bedight in veils and drowned in tears sit in a theatre to see a play of hopes and fears while the orchestra breathes fitfully the music of the spheres

mimes in the form of god on high mutter and mumble low and hither and thither fly mere puppets they who come and go at bidding of vast formless things that shifts the scenery to and fro flapping from out their condor wings invisible woe that motley drama oh be sure it shall not be forgot with its phantom chased forevermore by a crowd that sees it not through a circle that ever returneth in to the self-same spot and much of madness and more of sin and horror the soul of the plot but see amid the mimic rout a crawling shape intrude a blood-red thing that writhes from out the scenic solitude it writhes it writhes it writhes with mortal pangs the mimes become its food and the seraphs sob at vermin fangs in human gore imbued out out are the lights out all and over each quivering form the curtain a funeral pall comes down with the rush of a storm and the angels all pallid and wan uprising unveiling affirm

that the play is the tragedy man and its hero the conqueror worm oh god half shrieked lygia leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement as i made an end of these lines o god o divine father shall these things be undeviatingly so shall this conqueror be not once conquered are we not part and parcel in thee who who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor man doth not yield him to the angels nor unto death utterly save only through the weakness of his feeble will and now as if exhausted with emotion she suffered her white arms to fall and returned solemnly to her bed of death and as she breathed her last sighs there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips i bent to them my ear and distinguished again the concluding words of the passage in glanville man doth not yield him to the angels nor run to death utterly save only through the weakness of his feeble will she died and i crushed into the very dust with sorrow could no longer endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the rhine

i had no lack of what the world calls wealth ligeia had brought me far more very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals after a few months therefore of weary and aimless wandering i purchased and put in some repair an abbey which i shall not name in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair england the gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building the almost savage aspect of the domain the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with both had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country yet although the external abbey with its verdant decay hanging about it suffered but little alteration i gave way with a childlike perversity and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows to a display of more than regal magnificence within for such follies even in childhood i had imbibed a taste and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief alas i feel how much even of the incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies in the solemn carvings of egypt in the wild cornices and furniture in the bedland patterns of the carpets of tufted gold

i had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium and my labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my dreams but these absurdities must not pause to detail let me speak only of that one chamber ever accursed whither in a moment of mental alienation i led from the altar as my bride as the successor of the unforgotten lygea the fair-haired and blue-eyed lady roenna trevanian of tremayne there is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of that bridal chamber which is not now visibly before me where were the souls of the haughty family of the bride when through thirst of gold they permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment so bedecked a maiden and a daughter so beloved i have said that i minutely remember the details of the chamber yet i am sadly forgetful on topics of deep moment and here there was no system no keeping in the fantastic display to take hold upon the memory

the room lay in a high turret of the castellated abbey was pentagonal in shape and of capacious size occupying the whole southern face of the pentagon was the sole window an immense sheet of unbroken glass from venice a single pane and tinted of a leaden hue so that the rays of either the sun or moon passing through it fell with a ghastly lustre on the objects within over the upper portion of the tower window extended the trellis-work of an aged vine which clambered up the massy walls of the turret the ceiling of gloomy-looking oak was excessively lofty vaulted and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-gothic semi-geruitical device from out the most central recess of this melancholy vaulting depended by a single chain of gold with long links a huge censer of the same metal saracenic in pattern and with many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them as if endued with a serpent vitality a continual succession of parti-colored fires

some few ottomans and golden candelabra of eastern figure were in various stations about and there was the couch too bridal couch of an indian model and low and sculptured of solid ebony with a pall-like canopy above in each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite from the tombs of the kings over against luxor with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture but in the draping of the apartment lay alas the chief fantasy of all the lofty walls gigantic in height even unproportionably so were hung from summit to foot in vast folds with a heavy and massive-looking tapestry tapestry of a material which was found alike as carpet on the floor as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed and as a canopy for the bed and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially shaded the window the material was the richest cloth of gold it was spotted all over at regular intervals with arabesque figures about a foot in diameter and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black

but these figures partook of the true character of the arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view by a contrivance now common and indeed traceable to a very remote period of antiquity they were made changeable in aspect to one entering the room they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities but upon a farther advance this appearance gradually departed and step by step as the visitor moved his station in the chamber he saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the norman or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk the phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the draperies giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole in halls such as these in a bridal chamber such as this i passed with the lady tremayne the unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage passed them with but little disquietude

that my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper that she shunned me and loved me but little i could not help perceiving but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise i loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man my memory flew back oh with what intensity of regret till i jeer the beloved the august the beautiful the entombed i reveled in recollections of her purity of her wisdom of her lofty her ethereal nature of her passionate her idolatrous love now then did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own in the excitement of my opium dreams for i was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug i would call aloud upon her name during the silence of the night or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day as if through the wild eagerness the solemn passion the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed i could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned ah could it be for ever upon the earth

about the commencement of the second month of the marriage the lady roenna was attacked with sudden illness from which her recovery was slow the fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy and in her perturbed state of half slumber she spoke of sounds and of motions in and about the chamber of the church which i concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself she became at length convalescent finally well yet but a brief period elapsed ere a second more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering and from this attack her frame at all times feeble never altogether recovered her illnesses were after this epoch of alarming character and of more alarming recurrence defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians with the increase of the chronic disease which had thus apparently taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by human means i could not fall to observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament and in her excitability by trivial causes of fear she spoke again and now more frequently

and pertinaciously of the slight sounds of the unusual motions among the tapestries to which she had formerly alluded one night near the closing in of september she pressed this distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention she had just awakened from an unquieted slumber and i had been watching with feelings half of anxiety half of vague terror the workings of her emaciated countenance i sat by the side of her ebony bed upon one of the ottomans of india she partly arose and spoke in an earnest low whisper of the sounds which she then heard but which i could not hear of motions which she then saw but which i could not perceive the wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries and i wished to show her what let me confess it i could not all believe that those almost inarticulate breathings and those very gentle variations of the figures upon the wall were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of the wind but a deadly pallor overspreading her face had proved to me that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless she appeared to be fainting and no attendants were within call

i remember there was deposited a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her physicians and hastened across the chamber to procure it but as i stepped beneath the light of the censer two circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention i had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person and i saw that there lay upon the golden carpet in the very middle of the rich lustre thrown from the censer a shadow a faint indefinite shadow of angelic aspect such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade but i was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium and he did these things but little nor spoke of them to rowenna having found the wine i recrossed the chamber and poured out a gobletful which i held to the lips of the fainting lady she had now partially recovered however and took the vessel herself while i sank upon an ottoman near me with my eyes fastened upon her person it was then that i became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet and near the couch

and in a second thereafter as rowenna was in the act of raising the wine to her lips i saw or may have dreamed that i saw fall within the goblet as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby-coloured fluid if this i saw not so rowenna she swallowed the wine unhesitatingly and i forbore to speak to her of a circumstance which must after all i considered have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady by the opium and by the hour yet i cannot conceal it from my own perception that immediately subsequent to the fall of the ruby drops a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder of my wife so that on the third subsequent night the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb and on the fourth i sat alone with her shrouded body in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride wild visions opium engendered flitted shadow-like before me i gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room upon the varying figures of the drapery and upon the writhing of the particoloured fires in the censer overhead my eyes then fell as i called to mind the circumstances of a former night to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where i had seen the faint traces of the shadow

it was there however no longer and breathing with greater freedom i turned my glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed then rushed upon me a thousand memories of lygia and then came back upon my heart with the turbulent violence of a flood the whole of that unutterable woe with which i had regarded her thus enshrouded the night waned and still with the bosom full of bitter thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved i remained gazing upon the body of it might have been at midnight or perhaps earlier or later for i had taken no note of time when a sob low gentle but very distinct startled me from my reverie i felt that it came from the bed of ebony the bed of death i listened in an agony of superstitious terror but there was no repetition of the sound i strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse but there was not the slightest perceptible yet i could not have been deceived i had heard the noise however faint and my soul was awakened within me i resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body many minutes elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the mystery

at length it became evident that a slight a very feeble and barely noticeable tinge of colour had flushed up within the cheeks and along the sunken small veins of the eyelids through a species of unutterable horror and awe for which the language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression i felt my heart cease to beat my limbs grow rigid where i sat yet a sense of duty finally operated to restore my self-possession i could no longer doubt that we had been precipitate in our preparations that rowena still lived it was necessary that some immediate exertion be made yet turret was altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants there were none within call i had no means of summoning them to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes and this i could not venture to do i therefore struggled alone in my endeavours to call back the spirit ill hovering

in a short period it was certain however that a relapse had taken place the colour disappeared from both eyelid and cheek leaving a oneness even more than that of marble the lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body and all the usual rigorous illness immediately supervened i fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which i had been so startlingly aroused and again gave myself up to passionate waking visions of ligeia an hour thus elapsed when could it be possible i was a second time aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed i listened in extremity of horror the sound came again it was a sigh rushing to the corpse i saw distinctly saw a tremor upon the lips in a minute afterward they relaxed disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth amazement now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which had hitherto reigned there alone i felt that my vision grew dim that my reason wandered and it was only by a violent effort that i at length succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had pointed out

there was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon the cheek and throat a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame there was even a slight pulsation at the heart the lady lived and with redoubled ardor i betook myself to the task of restoration i chafed and bathed the temples and the hands and used every exertion which experience and no little medical reading could suggest but in vain suddenly the color fled the pulsation ceased the lips resumed the expression of the dead and in an instant afterward the whole body took upon itself the icy chillingness the livid hue the intense rigidity the sunken outline and all the loathsome peculiarities of that which has been for many days a tenant of the tomb and again i sunk into visions of lygia and again what marvel that i shudder while i write again there reached my ears a low sob from the region of the ebony bed but why shall i minutely detail the unspeakable horrors of that night why shall i pause to relate how time after time until near the period of the gray dawn this hideous drama of revivification was repeated how each terrific relapse was only into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death

how each agony wore the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe and how each struggle was succeeded by i know not what of a wild change in the personal appearance of the corpse let me hurry to a conclusion the greater part of the fearful night had worn away and she who had been dead once again stirred and now more vigorously than hitherto although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter hopelessness than any i had long ceased to struggle or to move and remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions of which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible the least consuming the corpse i repeat stirred and now more vigorously than before the hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy into the countenance the limbs relaxed and save that the eyelids were yet pressed heavily together and that the bandages and draperies of the grave still imparted their charnell character to the figure i might have dreamed that rowena had indeed shaken off utterly fetters of death but if this idea was not even then altogether adopted

i could at least doubt no longer when arising from the bed tottering with feeble steps with closed eyes and with the manner of one bewildered in a dream the thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into the middle of the apartment i trembled not i stirred not for a crowd of unutterable fancies connected with the air the stature the demeanor of the figure rushed hurriedly through my brain had paralyzed had chilled me into stone i stirred not but gazed upon the apparition there was a mad disorder in my thoughts a tumult unappeasable could it indeed be the living rowena who confronted me could it indeed be rowena at all the fair-haired the blue-eyed lady rowena trevanian of tremayne why why should i doubt it the bandage lay heavily about the mouth but then might it not be the mouth of the breathing lady of tremayne and the cheeks there were the roses as in her noon of life yes these might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living lady of tremayne and the chin with its dimples as in health might it not be hers

but had she then grown taller since her melody what inexpressible madness seized me with that thought one bound and i had reached her feet shrinking from my touch she let fall from her head unloosened the ghastly ceramics which had confined it and there streamed forth into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber huge masses of long and disheveled hair it was blacker than the raven wings of the midnight and now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me here then at least i shrieked aloud can i never can i never be mistaken these are the full and the black and the wild eyes of my lost love of the lady of the lady lygia end of the lady lygia recording by novella serena