which I pored.  Ligeia 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 most gentle emotion.  I saw that she must die—­and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael.  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 the 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 alike the uttermost of 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 my making them?  But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate.  Let me say only, that in Ligeia’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.