of Ewern should be a
three-days' bridegroom, and that the spell should begin on the wedding
morning, were incidents that seemed to intensify every line of the
poem. In this view of Rossetti's account of the additions, there were
certainly difficulties out of which I could see no way, but I seemed
to realise that Helen's hate, like Macbeth's ambition, had overleaped
itself, and fallen on the other side, and that she would undo her work,
if to return were not harder than to go on; her initiate sensibility had
gained hard use, but even as hate recoils on love, so out of the ashes
of hate love had arisen. In this view of the characterisation of Helen,
the parallel with Macbeth struck me more and more as I thought of it.
When Macbeth kills Duncan, and hears the grooms of the chamber cry in
their sleep--"God bless us," he cannot say "Amen,"

I had most need of blessing, and Amen
Stuck in my throat.

Helen pleading too late for mercy against the potency of the spell she
herself had raised, seemed to me an incident that raised her to the
utmost height of tragic creation. But Rossetti's purpose was at once
less ambitious and more satisfying.

Your passage as to the changes in _Sister Helen_ could not
well (with all its fine suggestiveness) be likely to meet
exactly a reality which had not been submitted to your eye
in the verses themselves. It is the _bride of Keith_ who is
the last pleader--as vainly as the others, and with a yet
more exulting development of vengeance in the forsaken
witch. The only acknowledgment by her of a mutual misery is
still found in the line you spotted as so great a gain
before, and in the last line she speaks. I ought to have
sent the stanzas to explain them properly, but have some
reluctance to ventilate them at present, much as I should
like the opportunity of reading them to you. They will meet
your eye in due course, and I am sure of your approval also
as regards their value to the ballad.... Don't let the
changes in _Helen_ get wind overmuch. I want them to be new
when published. Answer this when you can. I like getting
your epistles.

The fresh stanzas in question, which had already obtained the suffrages
of his brother, of Mr. Bell Scott, and other qualified critics, were
subsequently sent to me. They are as follows. After Keith of Keith,
the father of Sister Helen's sometime lover, has pleaded