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Tennyson's Poetry Alfred Lord Tennyson
"The Lotos-Eaters"
Complete Text
"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
The charmed sunset linger'd low adown
In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem'd the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, "We will return no more";
And all at once they sang, "Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."
Summary
Odysseus tells his mariners to have courage, assuring them that they will soon
reach the shore of their home. In the afternoon, they reach a land "in which it
seemed always afternoon" because of the languid and peaceful atmosphere. The
mariners sight this "land of streams" with its gleaming river flowing to the
sea, its three snow-capped mountaintops, and its shadowy pine growing in the
vale.
The mariners are greeted by the "mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters," whose dark
faces appear pale against the rosy sunset. These Lotos-eaters come
bearing the
flower and fruit of the lotos, which they offer to Odysseus's mariners. Those
who eat the lotos feel as if they have fallen into a deep sleep; they sit down
upon the yellow sand of the island and can hardly perceive their fellow mariners
speaking to them, hearing only the music of their heartbeat in their ears.
Although it has been sweet to dream of their homes in Ithaca, the lotos makes
them weary of wandering, preferring to linger here. One who has eaten of the
lotos fruit proclaims that he will "return no more," and all of the mariners
begin to sing about this resolution to remain in the land of the
Lotos-eaters.
The rest of the poem consists of the eight numbered stanzas of the mariners'
choric song, expressing their resolution to stay forever. First, they praise
the sweet and soporific music of the land of the Lotos-eaters, comparing
this
music to petals, dew, granite, and tired eyelids. In the second stanza, they
question why man is the only creature in nature who must toil. They argue that
everything else in nature is able to rest and stay still, but man is tossed from
one sorrow to another. Man's inner spirit tells him that tranquility and
calmness offer the only joy, and yet he is fated to toil and wander his whole
life.
In the third stanza, the mariners declare that everything in nature is allotted
a lifespan in which to bloom and fade. As examples of other living things that
die, they cite the "folded leaf, which eventually turns yellow and drifts
to the
earth, as well as the "full-juiced apple," which ultimately falls to the
ground,
and the flower, which ripens and fades. Next, in the fourth stanza, the
mariners
question the purpose of a life of labor, since nothing is cumulative and thus
all our accomplishments lead nowhere. They question "what...will last,"
proclaiming that everything in life is fleeting and therefore futile. The
mariners also express their desire for "long rest or death," either of which
will free them from a life of endless labor.
The fifth stanza echoes the first stanza's positive appeal to luxurious
self-indulgence;
the mariners declare how sweet it is to live a life of continuous
dreaming. They paint a picture of what it might be like to do nothing all day
except sleep, dream, eat lotos, and watch the waves on the beach. Such an
existence would enable them peacefully to remember all those individuals they
once knew who are now either buried ("heaped over with a mound of grass") or
cremated ("two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!").
In the sixth stanza, the mariners reason that their families have probably
forgotten them anyway, and their homes fallen apart, so they might as well
stay
in the land of the Lotos-eaters and "let what is broken so remain." Although
they have fond memories of their wives and sons, surely by now, after ten years
of fighting in Troy, their sons have inherited their property; it will merely
cause unnecessary confusion and disturbances for them to return now. Their
hearts are worn out from fighting wars and navigating the seas by means of the
constellations, and thus they prefer the relaxing death-like existence of the
Land of the Lotos to the confusion that a return home would create.
In the seventh stanza, as in the first and fifth, the mariners bask in the
pleasant sights and sounds of the island. They imagine how sweet it would be to
lie on beds of flowers while watching the river flow and listening to the echoes
in the caves. Finally, the poem closes with the mariners' vow to spend the rest
of their lives relaxing and reclining in the "hollow Lotos land." They compare
the life of abandon, which they will enjoy in Lotos land, to the carefree
existence
of the Gods, who could not care less about the famines, plagues,
earthquakes, and
other natural disasters that plague human beings on earth. These Gods simply
smile upon men, who till the earth and harvest crops until they either suffer in
hell or dwell in the "Elysian valleys" of heaven. Since they have concluded
that "slumber is more sweet than toil," the mariners resolve to stop wandering
the seas and to settle instead in the land of the Lotos-eaters.
Form
This poem is divided into two parts: the first is a descriptive narrative (lines
1-45), and the second is a song of eight numbered stanzas of varying length
(lines 46-173). The first part of the poem is written in nine-line Spenserian
stanzas, so called because they were employed by Spenser in The Faerie
Queene. The rhyme scheme of the Spenserian stanza is a
closely interlinked ABABBCBCC, with the first eight lines in iambic
pentameter and the final line an Alexandrine (or line of six iambic feet). The
choric song follows a far looser structure: both the line-length and the rhyme
scheme vary widely among the eight stanzas.
Commentary
This poem is based on the story of Odysseus's mariners described in scroll IX of
Homer's Odyssey. Homer writes about a storm that blows
the great hero's mariners off course as they attempt to journey back from Troy
to their homes in Ithaca. They come to a land where people do nothing but eat
lotos (the Greek for our English "lotus"), a flower so delicious that some of
his men, upon tasting it, lose all desire to return to Ithaca and long only to
remain in the Land of the Lotos. Odysseus must drag his men away so that they
can resume their journey home. In this poem, Tennyson powerfully evokes the
mariners' yearning to settle into a life of peacefulness, rest, and even death.
The poem draws not only on Homer's Odyssey, but also on the
biblical
Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis. In the Bible, a "life of toil" is Adam's
punishment for partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: after succumbing
to the temptation of the fruit, Adam is condemned to labor by the sweat of his
brow. Yet in this poem, fruit (the lotos) provides a release from
the life of labor, suggesting an inversion of the biblical story.
Tennyson provides a tempting and seductive vision of a life free from toil. His
description of the Lotos Land rivals the images of pleasure in Milton's
"L'Allegro" and Marvell's "The Garden." Yet his lush descriptive passages are
accompanied by persuasive rhetoric; nearly every stanza of the choric song
presents a different argument to justify the mariners' resolution to remain in
the Lotos Land. For example, in the second stanza of the song the mariners
express the irony of the fact that man, who is the pinnacle and apex of
creation, is the only creature made to toil and labor all the days of his life.
This stanza may also be read as a pointed inversion and overturning of
Coleridge's "Work without Hope," in which the speaker laments that "all nature
seems at work" while he alone remains unoccupied.
Although the taste of the lotos and the vision of life it offers is seductive,
the poem suggests that the mariners may be deceiving themselves in succumbing to
the hypnotic power of the flower. Partaking of the lotos involves abandoning
external reality and living instead in a world of appearances, where everything
"seems" to be but nothing actually is: the Lotos Land emerges as "a land where
all things always seemed the same" (line 24). Indeed, the word "seems" recurs
throughout the poem, and can be found in all but one of the opening five
stanzas, suggesting that the Lotos Land is not so much a "land of streams" as a
"land of seems." In addition, in the final stanza of the choric song, the poem
describes the Lotos Land as a "hollow" land with "hollow" caves, indicating that
the vision of the sailors is somehow empty and insubstantial.
The reader, too, is left with ambivalent feelings about the mariners' argument
for lassitude. Although the thought of life without toil is certainly tempting,
it is also deeply unsettling. The reader's discomfort with this notion arises
in part from the knowledge of the broader context of the poem: Odysseus will
ultimately drag his men away from the Lotos Land disapprovingly; moreover, his
injunction to have "courage" opens--and then overshadows--the whole poem with a
sense of moral opprobrium. The sailors' case for lassitude is further
undermined morally by their complaint that it is unpleasant "to war with evil"
(line 94); are they too lazy to do what is right? By choosing the Lotos Land,
the mariners are abandoning the sources of substantive meaning in life and the
potential for heroic accomplishment. Thus in this poem Tennyson forces us to
consider the ambiguous appeal of a life without toil: although all of us share
the longing for a carefree and relaxed existence, few people could truly be
happy without any challenges to overcome, without the fire of aspiration and the
struggle to make the world a better place.
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