bydos he made additions, in the course of printing,
amounting, altogether, to near two hundred lines; and, as usual, among
the passages thus added, were some of the happiest and most brilliant in
the whole poem. The opening lines,--"Know ye the land,' &c.--supposed to
have been suggested to him by a song of Goethe's[106]--were among the
number of these new insertions, as were also those fine verses,--"Who
hath not proved how feebly words essay," &c. Of one of the most popular
lines in this latter passage, it is not only curious, but instructive,
to trace the progress to its present state of finish. Having at first
written--

"Mind on her lip and music in her face,"

he afterwards altered it to--

"The mind of music breathing in her face."

But, this not satisfying him, the next step of correction brought the
line to what it is at present--

"The mind, the music breathing from her face."[107]

But the longest, as well as most splendid, of those passages, with which
the perusal of his own strains, during revision, inspired him, was that
rich flow of eloquent feeling which follows the couplet,--"Thou, my
Zuleika, share and bless my bark," &c.--a strain of poetry, which, for
energy and tenderness of thought, for music of versification, and
selectness of diction, has, throughout the greater portion of it, but
few rivals in either ancient or modern song. All this passage was sent,
in successive scraps, to the printer,--correction following correction,
and thought reinforced by thought. We have here, too, another example of
that retouching process by which some of his most exquisite effects were
attained. Every reader remembers the four beautiful lines--

"Or, since that hope denied in worlds of strife,
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!"

In the first copy of this passage sent to the publisher, the last line
was written thus--

{_an airy_}
"And tints to-morrow with a { fancied } ray"--

the following note being annexed:--"Mr. Murray,--Choose which of the two
epithets, 'fancied,' or 'airy,' may be the best; or, if neither will do,
tell me, and I will dream another." The poet's dream was, it must be
owned, lucky,--"prophetic" being the word, of all others, for his
purpose.[108]

I shall select but one more example, from the additions to this poem, as
a proof