The figures in this canvas are almost identical to those in the first version (now at the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico), though the young courtiers on the right now have closed rather than open mouths. Burne-Jones could not have been satisfied with the composition, however, and intro- duced some elaborations to the oil that was finally exhibited at Agnew's and is now at Buscot Park. A seated figure was introduced at the left, as a vertical feature to balance the new throne for the king. The courtier at the king's feet is shown full-face (and, like his master, he has fallen asleep while read- ing), while the curtain is given stronger folds and raised to reveal the faces of sleeping knights in the courtyard beyond. These are Morris's accompanying lines: The threat of war, the hope of peace, The Kingdom's peril and increase Sleep on and bide the latter day, When fate shall take her chains away. In the reworking of this and all the later oils, Burne-Jones increased the density of the rose foliage and blossom. Writing about 1884 to Eleanor, Lady Leighton, he had asked whether "if in your land there grow stems of wild-rose such as I have to paint in my four pictures of the Sleeping Palace — and if deep in some tangle there is a hoary, aged monarch of the tangle, thick as a wrist and with long, horrible spikes on it." Just such a piece of briar was found and duly dispatched, Burne-Jones reporting that he would "for many days reconsider all my ways, amending the old work everywhere. . . . For I had made all the thorns too big — -too hooked and sharp — not the stems too thick, but the thorns were all amiss; and now my honour will be saved, and the Sleeping Beauty's honour, which is of more account." 1 i. Memorials, vol. I, p. 145.