sic
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 rivaling 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