“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!) Besides these there are two new stanzas, one going before, and the other following after, the six stanzas quoted, but as the scattered passages involve no farther incident, and are rather of interest as explaining and perfecting the idea here expressed, than valuable in themselves, I do not reprint them. I think it must be allowed, by fit judges, that nothing more subtly conceived than this incident can be met with in English poetry, though something akin to it was projected by Coleridge in an episode of his contemplated _Michael Scott_. It is--in the full sense of an abused epithet--too weird to be called picturesque. But the crowning merit of the poem still lies, as I have said, in the domain of character. Through all the outbursts of her ignescent hate Sister Helen can never lose the ineradicable relics of her human love: But he and I are sadder still. As Rossetti from time to time made changes in his poems, he transcribed the amended verses in a copy of the Tauchnitz edition which he kept constantly by him. Upon reference to this little volume some days after his death, I discovered that he had prefaced _Sister Helen_ with a note written in pencil, of which he had given me the substance in conversation about the time of the publication of the altered version, but which he abandoned while passing the book through the press. The note (evidently designed to precede the ballad) runs: It is not unlikely that some may be offended at seeing the additions made thus late to the ballad of _S. H._ My best excuse is that I believe some will wonder with myself that such a climax did not enter into the first conception. At the foot of the poem this further note is written: I wrote this ballad either in 1851 or early in 1852. It was printed in a thing called _The Düsseldorf Annual_ in (I think) 1853--published in Germany. {*}