The Lotus
Eaters
Sailing thence they were overtaken by a storm
which drove them for nine days till they reached
the country of the Lotos-eaters. Here, after
watering, Ulysses sent three of his men to
discover who the inhabitants were. These men on
coming among the Lotos-eaters were kindly
entertained by them and were given some of their
own food, the lotos plant, to eat. The effect of
this food was such that those who partook of it
lost all thought of home and wished to remain in
that country. It was by main force that Ulysses
dragged these men away, and he was even obliged to
tie them under the benches of his ship.
Tennyson in The Lotos-eaters has fittingly
expressed the dreamy, languid feeling which the
lotus-food is said to have produced.
. . . How sweet it were, hearing the downward
stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whisper'd speech;
Eating the Lotos, day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap'd over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of
brass!
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd
change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
. . . But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill--
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine--
To watch the emerald-color'd water falling
Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the
pine.
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:
The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust
is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the
surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his
foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal
mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of
mankind. . . .
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