She dies, when she would rather do anything than die. And when she dies the clue, which he only lived to grasp, dies with her.
Foiled!
Foiled!
No wonder she shrieks with her last breath.
On the last day Ligeia dictates to her husband a poem. As poems go, it is rather false, meretricious. But put yourself in Ligeia's place, and it is real enough, and ghastly beyond bearing.
"Out, out are all the lights—but 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."
Which is the American equivalent for a William Blake poem. For Blake, too, was one of these ghastly, obscene "Knowers."
"'O God!' half shrieked Ligeia, 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 the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.'"
So Ligeia dies. And yields to death at least partly. Anche troppo.
As for her cry to God—has not God said that those who sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven?