Compare the familiar line in Gray's _Elegy_:
James Russell Lowell
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
and Tennyson's line, in the _Ode to the Duke of Wellington_:
"The path of duty was the way of glory."
In a letter to T.W. Higginson, who was editing the _Harvard Memorial
Biographies_, in which he was to print the ode, Lowell asked to have
the following passage inserted at this point:
"Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave,
But through those constellations go
That shed celestial influence on the brave.
If life were but to draw this dusty breath
That doth our wits enslave,
And with the crowd to hurry to and fro,
Seeking we know not what, and finding death,
These did unwisely; but if living be,
As some are born to know,
The power to ennoble, and inspire
In other souls our brave desire
For fruit, not leaves, of Time's immortal tree,
These truly live, our thought's essential fire,
And to the saner," etc.
Lowell's remark in _The Cathedral_, that "second thoughts are prose,"
might be fairly applied to this emendation. Fortunately, the passage
was never inserted in the ode.