The Lotos-Eaters

“The Lotos-Eaters” is a poem by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in the collection Poems (1832; dated 1833). The poem is based on an episode in Book 9 of Homer’s Odyssey.

Odysseus’s sailors, returning home after the fall of Troy, are forced to land in a strange country after a strong wind propels them past the island of Cythera. The inhabitants, “the mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters,” are sustained solely on the fruit of the lotus plant.

The sailors, too, eat the fruit and lose all desire to continue their journey.

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone.
…
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

The poem is structured into two sections: a five-stanza, third-person narrative that describes the sailors’ arrival on the island and their first encounter with the lotos-eaters; and an eight-part “Choric Song” that is voiced by the sailors. Among the poetic techniques used by Tennyson is alliteration, especially repetition of the consonants l, m, s, and w, which creates a soft and hypnotic musicality that parallels the sailors’ increasing languor.