Helen_, in
its first form, ran:

Oh, the wind is sad in the iron chill,
Sister Helen,
And weary sad they look by the hill;
But Keith of Ewern 's sadder still,
Little brother.--etc. etc.

In the later edition the fourth line of this stanza ran:

But he and I are sadder still.

The change adds enormously to one's estimate of the characterisation.
All through the ballad one wants to feel that, despite the bitterness
of her speech, the heart of the relentless witch is breaking. Like _The
Broken Heart_ of Ford, the ballad with the amended line was a masterly
picture of suppressed emotion. I hoped the new incident touched the same
chord. Rossetti replied:

Thanks for your present letter, which I will answer with
pleasurable care. At present I send you the Tauchnitz
edition of my things. The bound copy is hideous, but more
convenient--the other pretty. You will find a good many
things bettered (I believe) even on the _latest_ English
edition. I did not remember that the line you quote from
_Sister Helen_ appeared in the new form at all in an English
issue. I am greatly pleased at your thinking it, as I do,
quite a transfiguring change... The next point I have marked
in your letter is that about the additions to _Sister
Helen_. Of course I knew that your hair must arise from your
scalp in protest. But what should you say if Keith of Ewern
were a three days' bridegroom--if the spell had begun on the
wedding-morning--and if the bride herself became the last
pleader for mercy? I fancy you will see your way now. The
culminating, irresistible provocation helps, I think, to
humanize Helen, besides lifting the tragedy to a yet sterner
height.

If I had felt (as Rossetti predicted I should) an uneasy sensation
about the roots of the hair upon hearing that he was making important
additions to the ballad which seemed to me to be the finest of his
works, the sensation in that quarter was not less, but more, upon
learning the nature of those additions. But I mistook the character of
the new incidents. That Sister Helen should be herself the abandoned
_bride_ of Ewern (for so I understood the poet's explanation), and, as
such, the last pleader for mercy, pointed, I thought, in the direction
of the humanizing emendation ("But he and I are sadder still ")
which had given me so much pleasure. That Keith