Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  In regard to the "left or most northwardly" of the indentures in

  figure 4, it is more than probable that the opinion of Peters was

  correct, and that the hieroglyphical appearance was really the work

  of art, and intended as the representation of a human form. The

  delineation is before the reader, and he may, or may not, perceive

  the resemblance suggested; but the rest of the indentures afford

  strong confirmation of Peters' idea. The upper range is evidently the

  Arabic verbal root {image}. "To be white," whence all the inflections

  of brilliancy and whiteness. The lower range is not so immediately

  perspicuous. The characters are somewhat broken and disjointed;

  nevertheless, it can not be doubted that, in their perfect state,

  they formed the full Egyptian word {image}. "The region of the

  south.' It should be observed that these interpretations confirm the

  opinion of Peters in regard to the "most northwardly" of the,

  figures. The arm is outstretched toward the south.

  Conclusions such as these open a wide field for speculation and

  exciting conjecture. They should be regarded, perhaps, in connection

  with some of the most faintly detailed incidents of the narrative;

  although in no visible manner is this chain of connection complete.

  Tekeli-li! was the cry of the affrighted natives of Tsalal upon

  discovering the carcase of the _white _animal picked up at sea. This

  also was the shuddering exclamatives of Tsalal upon discovering the

  carcass of the _white _materials in possession of Mr. Pym. This also

  was the shriek of the swift-flying, _white, _and gigantic birds which

  issued from the vapory _white _curtain of the South. Nothing _white

  _was to be found at Tsalal, and nothing otherwise in the subsequent

  voyage to the region beyond. It is not impossible that "Tsalal," the

  appellation of the island of the chasms, may be found, upon minute

  philological scrutiny, to betray either some alliance with the chasms

  themselves, or some reference to the Ethiopian characters so

  mysteriously written in their windings.

  _"I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust

  within the rock."_

  ~~~ End of text Chapter 25 ~~~

  Notes

  {*1} Whaling vessels are usually fitted with iron oil-tanks- why the

  _Grampus_ was not I have never been able to ascertain.

  {*2} The case of the brig _Polly_, of Boston, is one so much in

  point, and her fate, in many respects, so remarkably similar to our

  own, that I cannot forbear alluding to it here. This vessel, of one

  hundred and thirty tons burden, sailed from Boston, with a cargo of

  lumber and provisions, for Santa Croix, on the twelfth of December,

  1811, under the command of Captain Casneau. There were eight souls on

  board besides the captain- the mate, four seamen, and the cook,

  together with a Mr. Hunt, and a negro girl belonging to him. On the

  fifteenth, having cleared the shoal of Georges, she sprung a leak in

  a gale of wind from the southeast, and was finally capsized; but, the

  masts going by the board, she afterward righted. They remained in

  this situation, without fire, and with very little provision, for the

  period of one hundred and ninety-one days (from December the

  fifteenth to June the twentieth), when Captain Casneau and Samuel

  Badger, the only survivors, were taken off the wreck by the Fame, of

  Hull, Captain Featherstone, bound home from Rio Janeiro. When picked

  up, they were in latitude 28 degrees N., longitude 13 degrees W.,

  having drifted above two thousand miles! On the ninth of July the

  Fame fell in with the brig Dromero, Captain Perkins, who landed the

  two sufferers in Kennebeck. The narrative from which we gather these

  details ends in the following words:

  "It is natural to inquire how they could float such a vast

  distance, upon the most frequented part of the Atlantic, and not be

  discovered all this time. They were passed by more than a dozen sail,

  one of which came so nigh them that they could distinctly see the

  people on deck and on the rigging looking at them; but, to the

  inexpressible disappointment of the starving and freezing men, they

  stifled the dictates of compassion, hoisted sail, and cruelly

  abandoned them to their fate."

  {*3} Among the vessels which at various times have professed to meet

  with the Auroras may be mentioned the ship San Miguel, in 1769; the

  ship Aurora, in 1774; the brig Pearl, in 1779; and the ship Dolores,

  in 1790. They all agree in giving the mean latitude fifty-three

  degrees south.

  {*4} The terms morning and evening, which I have made use of to avoid

  confusion in my narrative, as far as possible, must not, of course,

  be taken in their ordinary sense. For a long time past we had had no

  night at all, the daylight being continual. The dates throughout are

  according to nautical time, and the bearing must be understood as per

  compass. I would also remark, in this place, that I cannot, in the

  first portion of what is here written, pretend to strict accuracy in

  respect to dates, or latitudes and longitudes, having kept no regular

  journal until after the period of which this first portion treats. In

  many instances I have relied altogether upon memory.

  {*5} This day was rendered remarkable by our observing in the south

  several huge wreaths of the grayish vapour I have spoken of.

  {*6} The marl was also black; indeed, we noticed no light colored

  substances of any kind upon the island.

  {*7}For obvious reasons I cannot pretend to strict accuracy in these

  dates. They are given principally with a view to perspicity of

  naarrative, and as set down in my pencil memorandum..

  ~~~~~~ End of Text ~~~~~~ Narrative of A. Gordon Pym

  ======

  LIGEIA

  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. Man doth not yield

  himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the

  weakness of his feeble will. --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 family -- I

  have surely heard her speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date

  cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! 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 Ligeia -- that 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 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 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 falls 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 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 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 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 eves 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.

  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

  theat 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 Jo
seph 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. 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 Ligeia. 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 Ligeia, 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 Ligeia: it was immense -- such as I

  have never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she 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

  Ligeia 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 breathes the man who has traversed, and