Lou Reed - Prologue (Ligiea) lyrics

[Young Poe]: In the science of the mind there is no point More thrilling than to notice which I never noticed in schools that in our endeavors to recall to memory something long-forgotten We often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance Without being in the end able to remember Under the intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes I have felt the full knowledge And force of their expression And yet been unable to possess it And have felt it leave me as so many other things have left The letter half-read, the bottle half-drunk Finding in the commonest objects Of the universe a circle of an*logies Of metaphors for that expression Which has been willfully withheld from me The access to the inner soul denied Eyes blazed with a too-glorious effulgence Pale fingers transparent, waxen, the hue of the grave Blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled And sunk impetuously with the tides of deep emotion And I saw that she must die That she was wresting with the dark shadow Her stern nature had impressed me With the belief that, to her d**h would come without its terrors but not so I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle I would have soothed I would have reasoned But she was amid the most convulsive of writhings Oh, pitiful soul Her voice more gentle, more low, and yet her words grew wilder of meaning I reeled, entranced, to a melody more than mortal She loved me, no doubt And in her bosom love reigned as no ordinary pa**ion But in d**h only was I impressed With the intensity of her affection Her more than pa**ionate devotion amounted to idolatry How had I deserved to be so blessed And then cursed with the removal of my beloved Upon the hour of her most delirious musings In her more than womanly abandonment to a love All unmerited and unworthily bestowed I came to realize the principle of her longing It was a yearning for life An eager, intense desire for life Which was now fleeing so rapidly away As she returned solemnly to her bed of d**h And I had no utterance capable of expressing it except to say Man doth not yield to the angels Nor unto d**h utterly save only through the weakness of his feeble will I became wild with the excitement Of an immoderate does of opium I saw her raising wine to her lips Or may have dreamed that I saw fall within a goblet As if from some invisible spring In the atmosphere of the room Three of four large drops Of a brilliant and ruby-colored fluid falling While Ligeia lay in her bed of ebony The bed of d**h with mine eyes riveted upon her body Then came a moan a sob low and gentle but once I listened in superstitious terror but heard it not again I strained vision to see any motion in the corpse But here was not the slightest perceptible Yet I had heard the noise And my whole soul was awakened within me The red liquid fell and I thought, Ligeia lives And I felt my brain reel My heart cease to beat And my limbs go rigid where I sat In extremity of horror I heard a vague sound issuing from the region of the bed Rushing to her I saw I distinctly saw a tremor upon her lips I sprang to my feet and chafed And bathed the temples and hands but in vain All color fled, all pulsation ceased Her lips resumed the expression of the dead The icy hue, the sunken outline And all the loathsome peculiarities of that Which for many days has been the tenant of the tomb And again I sank into visions of Ligeia And again I heard a low sob As I looked she seemed to grow taller What inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? I ran to touch her Her head fell, and her clothing crumbled And there streamed forth huge ma**es of long disheveled hair It was blacker than the raven wings of midnight