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Music

Music is a prominent motif in “The Lotos-Eaters.” Most importantly, music plays a structural role. The second part of the poem consists of the “Choric Song” that the mariners sing together. This song has an antiphonal structure that moves back and forth between celebrations of the sweetness of leisure and complaints about the bitterness of toil. Yet overall, the song itself represents an affirmation of the mariners’ profound desire for rest. Having eaten the lotos fruit and grown lethargic as a result, they cease to think about continuing their difficult sea journey. Instead, they join their voices in song, which is perhaps the quintessential leisure activity among sailors. The mariners note their delight in music at the very beginning of their Choric Song, which starts with a sustained appreciation of the sound coming from the island itself (lines 46–52):

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.

Here, the mariners link music thematically to the pleasure of seeking rest when weary. Near the end of the poem, however, music takes on a more ambiguous meaning. As the mariners rest on shore, they imagine themselves to be “like Gods together, careless of mankind” (line 155). Looking “over wasted lands” (line 159), they ignore the catastrophe below and, “they smile, they find a music centered in a doleful song” (162). Music, here, becomes a pleasant distraction from the ongoing troubles of the world.

“Sweet”

Aside from prepositions, articles (e.g., “a,” “the”), and other common words, the most frequently used word in the poem is “sweet.” Crucially, every instance of “sweet” occurs after the mariners have eaten the lotos fruit and have begun to feel its drowsy effects. The word first appears in the final stanza of the poem’s first section (lines 37–39):

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland

“Sweet” appears again immediately in the following stanza, which opens the mariners’ Choric Song: “There is sweet music here” (line 46) and “Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies” (line 52). Again and again in the stanzas that follow, the mariners use the word “sweet” to describe different forms of sensual pleasures they experience as they rest from their toilsome sea journey. Clearly, it is leisure rather than labor that gives existence this feeling of sweetness, and which compels these mariners to remain on the island. From another perspective, of course, they would not be able to experience this sweetness as fully had they not been physically and mentally conditioned by toil. In this sense, the sweetness the mariners celebrate is the product of both toil and rest.

Botanicals

References to botanical life abound in “The Lotos-Eaters.” Curiously, though, botanical references don’t play a starring role in the lengthy overview of the island that appears in the poem’s opening section. Despite stunning descriptions of mountains, streams, and vales, the only reference to botanical life is to “slender galingale” (line 23), a grass that populates a craggy cleft. It is only after the mariners have eaten the lotos fruit and begin to sing their Choric Song that botanicals become more prominent. Initially in this song, the botanicals are metaphorical. Note, for instance, how the mariners compare the “sweet music” they hear to the soft falling of “petals from blown roses on the grass” (lines 46 and 47). Elsewhere, however, references to real botanicals proliferate: “ivies” (line 54), “long-leaved flower” (line 55), “poppy” (line 56), “myrrh-bush” (line 103), “amaranth and moly” (line 133), “thick-twined vine” (line 140), and “beds of asphodel” (line 170). Aside from giving the impression that the island is a lush paradise, the botanical motif also references the cycle of life and death. Consider “the full-juiced apple” (line 78) that falls from its branch, only to be replaced a few days later by a new “flower ripens in its place” (line 81). Soon after relating this image, the mariners reflect on how all living things share this botanical quality: “All things . . . ripen toward the grave” (line 96).

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