Scarce heard, their chattering lips her shoulder chill,
    And her cold back their colder bosoms thrill;
    All blind she wilders o’er the lightless heath,
    Led by Fear’s cold wet hand, and dogg’d by Death;
    Death, as she turns her neck the kiss to seek,
    Breaks off the dreadful kiss with angry shriek. 
    Snatch’d from her shoulder with despairing moan,
    She clasps them at that dim-seen roofless stone.—­
    “Now ruthless Tempest launch thy deadliest dart! 
    Fall fires—­but let us perish heart to heart.” 1793.

The first, third, and fourth of these couplets were omitted from the edition of 1820.  The whole passage was withdrawn in 1827.]

[Variant 85: 

1820.

    Soon shall the Light’ning hold before thy head
    His torch, and shew them slumbering in their bed,

Only in the edition of 1793.]

[Variant 86: 

1820.

    While, by the scene compos’d, the breast subsides,
    Nought wakens or disturbs it’s tranquil tides;
    Nought but the char that for the may-fly leaps,
    And breaks the mirror of the circling deeps;
    Or clock, that blind against the wanderer born
    Drops at his feet, and stills his droning horn. 
   —­The whistling swain that plods his ringing way
    Where the slow waggon winds along the bay;
    The sugh [v] of swallow flocks that twittering sweep,
    The solemn curfew swinging long and deep;
    The talking boat that moves with pensive sound,
    Or drops his anchor down with plunge profound;
    Of boys that bathe remote the faint uproar,
    And restless piper wearying out the shore;
    These all to swell the village murmurs blend,
    That soften’d from the water-head descend. 
    While in sweet cadence rising small and still
    The far-off minstrels of the haunted hill,
    As the last bleating of the fold expires,
    Tune in the mountain dells their water lyres.

Only in the edition of 1793.]

[Variant 87: 

1845.

    ... of the night; 1793.]

[Variant 88: 

1815.

    Thence, from three paly loopholes mild and small,
    Slow lights upon the lake’s still bosom fall, 1793.]

[Variant 89: 

1827.

    Beyond the mountain’s giant reach that hides
    In deep determin’d gloom his subject tides. 
   —­Mid the dark steeps repose the shadowy streams,
    As touch’d with dawning moonlight’s hoary gleams,
    Long streaks of fairy light the wave illume
    With bordering lines of intervening gloom, 1793.

The second and third of these couplets were cancelled in the edition of 1815, and the whole passage was withdrawn in 1827.]

[Variant 90: 

1836.

    Soft o’er the surface creep the lustres pale
    Tracking with silvering path the changeful gale. 1793.