Elizabeth Siddal

Elizabeth Siddal, poet, painter, and wife and muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was born in London in 1829. She was the third of the eight children of Charles Siddall, an ironmonger, and his wife Elizabeth.

Silent Wood, A

by Elizabeth Siddal (1829–62)

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16

O silent wood, I enter thee

With a heart so full of misery

For all the voices from the trees

And the ferns that cling about my knees.

In thy darkest shadow let me sit

When the grey owls about thee flit;

There will I ask of thee a boon,

That I may not faint or die or swoon.

Gazing through the gloom like one

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