Lizzie Siddall 1829-1862 Poem by Sheena Blackhall

She first read Tennyson's poems printed on paper
Wrapped around a slab of country butter

Oh, she was pale and haunted, like a wraith
As if from birth she was marked out by Death

Her eyes were grey, her hair was shining copper
Modelled for Millais in a bath of water
In ice cold winter, posing as Ophelia
Her first near brush with death, bitter pneumonia

She was the muse and darling of Rosetti
Within her eyes he saw celestial vistas

Oh, she was pale and haunted, like a wraith
As if from birth she was marked out by Death

John Ruskin was the patron for her art
Her verses were set out like ancient ballads
Her drawings, mediaeval in their style
Anorexia, neuralgia, sore afflications
Laudanum mushroomed into an addiction

Too frail to walk five minutes to her wedding
Carried to church, her future, all downhill
She lost a baby, melancholy followed

Pregnant again, she overdosed on laudanum
Rossetti found her silent, motionless
Her death by suicide was covered up.

Oh, she was pale and haunted, like a wraith
As if from birth she was marked out by Death

He placed a booklet of his precious poems
Beside her in that lair beneath the ground.

Seven years passed, her body was disturbed,
Her coffin raised to resurrect his poems
Lazarus-like macabre, from the tomb

And then, he wrote a tribute to her life:
‘What of her glass without her? The blank grey
There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
Without her? Tears, ah me! For love's good grace,
And cold forgetfulness of night or day.'