"Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow, Sister Helen, 'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago." "One morn for pride, and three days for woe. Little brother!" (_O Mother, Mary Mother_, _Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven!_) "Her clasped hands stretch from her bending head, Sister Helen; With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed." "What wedding-strains hath her bridal bed, Little brother?" (_O Mother, Mary Mother_, _What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven?_) You must remember that the word "strains" is, nearly always used in the sense of musical tones, and that "wedding-strains" means the joyful music played at a wedding. Thus the ferocity of Helen's mockery becomes apparent, for it was upon the bridal night that the bridegroom was first bewitched; and from the moment of his marriage, therefore, he has been screaming in agony. The climax of hatred is in the next stanza. After that the tone begins to reverse, and gradually passes away in the melancholy of eternal despair. "She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon, Sister Helen,-- She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon." "Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune, Little brother!" (_O Mother, Mary Mother_, _Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!_) To "gasp" means to open the mouth in the effort to get breath, as one does in a fit of hysterics, or in time of great agony. "Gasps on the moon" means that she gasps with her face turned up toward the moon. In the last line we have the words "blithe tune" used in the same tone of terrible irony as that with which the word "wedding-strain" was used in the preceding stanza. "Blithe" means "merry." Helen is angry because the other woman has fainted; having fainted, she has become for the moment physically incapable of suffering. But Helen thinks that her soul must be conscious and suffering as much as ever; therefore she wishes that she could hear the suffering of the soul, since she cannot longer hear the outcries of the body. "They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow, Sister Helen, And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow." "Let it turn whiter than winter-snow, Little brother!" (_O Mother, Mary Mother_, _Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven!_) The allusion is to the physiological fact that intense moral pain, or terrible fear, sometimes turns the hair of a young person suddenly white. "O Sister Helen, you heard the bell, Sister Helen! More loud than the vesper-chime it fell." "No vesper-chime, but a dying knell, Little brother!" (_O Mother, Mary Mother_, _His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!_)