Elizabeth Siddal Poem: The Lust of the Eyes

As the star model  and muse of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , feted for her beauty, a disillusioned  Lizzie, no doubt disenchanted with Rossetti,  reflects bitterly  in her poem The Lust of The Eyes on how beauty only inspires fleeting transient  love.

Eager to expand beyond being a model and  become an artist herself,   Rossetti  lamenting the impact of her ill-health on her aspirations and talent wrote in a letter in July 1854 : "How truly she may say, ‘No man cared for my soul". She echoes that sentiment here.

The Lust of The Eyes

I care not for my Lady’s soul

Though I worship before her smile;
I care not where be my Lady’s goal
When her beauty shall lose its wile.

Low sit I down at my Lady’s feet
Gazing through her wild eyes
Smiling to think how my love will fleet
When their starlike beauty dies.

I care not if my Lady pray
To our Father which is in Heaven
But for joy my heart’s quick pulses play
For to me her love is given.

Then who shall close my Lady’s eyes
And who shall fold her hands?
Will any hearken if she cries
Up to the unknown lands