The Lotos-Eaters: Key Poetic Devices

Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, often made without explicit identification. Allusion plays a major role in Tennyson’s poem, which is based on an episode from the ninth book of Homer’s Odyssey. The Odyssey tells the story of the hero Odysseus and his fellow Greeks as they make the long sea journey home to Ithaca after fighting in the Trojan War. When the mariners land on a certain unknown island, the native inhabitants offer them “the honey-sweet fruit of the lotos.” Only some of the company try the fruit, which causes the men to grow lethargic and forgetful, no longer wishing to make the rest of the journey home. Thankfully, those who didn’t eat the lotos are able to convince their companions to sail on. Though the story of the lotos-eaters is quite brief in the Odyssey, Tennyson expands it into a formally innovative exploration of existential weariness.

In addition to the Odyssey, Tennyson’s poem also makes several allusions to Edmund Spenser’s epic poem from the late sixteenth century, The Faerie Queene. On its surface, Spenser’s poem is modeled on the genre of medieval romance, and so it follows several knights on their various exploits. However, the poem also functions allegorically, such that each book examines a different virtue. The first three books, for instance, concern the virtues of holiness, temperance, and chastity. Yet rather than referencing the moral allegory threaded throughout Spenser’s epic, the allusions to The Faerie Queene are linked to particular passages about rest. For example, in the Choric Song’s fourth stanza, the mariners sing about how “hateful is the dark blue sky” that is “vaulted o’er the dark blue sea” (lines 84–85). This complaint leads to an expression of their urgent desire for rest: “Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease” (line 98). This stanza may be read as an allusion to lines from the first book of Spenser’s poem (1.9.40):

Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.

Aside from specific textual references to The Faerie Queene, Tennyson also adopts the unique stanza form Spenser developed for his epic work. Each of the five stanzas in the poem’s first section strictly follows the Spenserian model.

Assonance, Consonance, and Alliteration

These three concepts are siblings, in that they all refer to the repetition of certain sounds in adjacent or nearby words. Assonance specifically refers to the repetition of vowel sounds, whereas consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. Alliteration refers to the repetition of any sound at the beginning of adjacent or nearby words. Tennyson uses all three techniques in concert throughout the poem, such that nearly every passage in the poem has lush sonic effects. To take just one example, consider the opening lines from the third stanza of the Choric Song (lines 70–75):

Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo’d from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep’d at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed

In terms of assonance, consider the long and short O and U sounds that appear throughout, creating suggestive associations among numerous words: “wood,” “woo’d,” “bud,” “broad,” “noon,” “moon,” and “dew.” As for consonance, note the preponderance of D sounds in the first two lines: “middle,” “wood,” “folded,” “woo’d,” and “bud.” Consider also the N sounds that populate the last two lines: “sun,” “noon,” “and,” “in,” “moon,” and “nightly.” Then, of course, there are the several alliterative phrases that punctuate the passage: “with winds,” “grows green,” and “sun-steep’d.” Working in concert within a single passage like this, assonance, consonance, and alliteration make for a dense tapestry of language.

Imagery

In poetry analysis, the term imagery refers to any use of vivid language that conjures a sensory experience, whether auditory, visual, olfactory, or tactile. Tennyson is well-known for being a master of vivid, image-driven language. However, in “The Lotos-Eaters,” he exceeds his usual reputation for imagery. For instance, the poem’s first section consists almost entirely of an elaborate visual description of the island of the lotos-eaters. To take just the second stanza as an example, consider how Tennyson uses lush language to convey the vertical scale of the island (lines 10–18):

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 vision presented here stretches from the foaming ocean to the snowy mountaintop. Tennyson conjures a dizzying sense of verticality by emphasizing visual vectors that point both up and down. The passage begins by describing the downward trajectory of the streams, which seem to pour down slowly as if they were made of smoke. The speaker’s eye follows the streams all the way to the sea before tracing back up the mountain, this time highlighting the upward thrust of “the shadowy pine above the woven copse.” In addition to the visual splendor of this passage, the speaker also contrasts the sound of the sea with the quietude of the “silent pinnacles of aged snow.”

Similarly suggestive uses of imagery appear everywhere in “The Lotos-Eaters.” On the one hand, the rich presence of imagery in the poem creates enormous pleasure for the reader, particularly if we read it aloud. The sonic density of the language feels pleasurable both to say and to hear. But perhaps more importantly, the poem’s abiding focus on the senses powerfully reflects the experience of the mariners. In giving up their toilsome sea journey home to Ithaca, these men are able to enjoy their leisure and engage more in the sensual pleasures of life. In their Choric Song, the mariners frequently underscore the sweetness of their sense experience, suggesting that the sights and sounds of the island are linked to the sweet taste of the lotos fruit. In the first stanza of their song, for instance, they celebrate the sweetness of the island’s music. In stanza 3 they celebrate the “full-juiced apple” (line 78) that has been “sweetened with the summer light” (line 77). Later, in stanzas 5 and 8 respectively, it’s the flowing river and slumber itself that are sweet. Above all, it is this multiform sweetness the mariners seek in their newfound leisure.

Repetition

Repetition plays an important role throughout “The Lotos-Eaters,” where Tennyson uses it frequently to suggest the kind of lethargy and laziness associated with the lotos fruit. This technique appears already in the poem’s opening lines:

“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.

Significantly, the first rhyme in the poem is one in which the same word is made to rhyme with itself. And, as if to indicate that this identical rhyme isn’t a mistake, Tennyson also repeats the word “afternoon,” which creates an unsettling sense of redundancy. Tennyson continues to play with the same technique throughout the poem. In some cases, the use of repetition has an eerie, even surreal effect, as when the speaker describes the brooks flowing down over the cliffs: “Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem” (line 9). Creepier still is the speaker’s description of the island’s native inhabitants “with faces pale, / Dark faces pale” (lines 25–26). Elsewhere, Tennyson uses repetition to emphasize the mariners’ exhaustion, as when they imagine returning to the ocean: “Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar, / Weary the wandering fields of barren foam” (lines 41–42). Finally, in one of the poem’s more conspicuous examples of repetition, the mariners develop a refrain in which they beg to be left to their own devices (lines 88–93):

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone.

Sibilance

“The Lotos-Eaters” makes important use of sibilance (SIH-bih-lence). Sibilance is a special case of consonance that refers specifically to the repetition of S sounds in close proximity. Depending on the context, sibilance can have different effects. Typically, though, a preponderance of sibilant sounds tends to have slowing and quieting effects. These are precisely the effects Tennyson emphasizes, which is appropriate for a poem that focuses thematically on seeking rest from toil. Sibilance arises most prominently in the Choric Song the mariners sing. Right from the beginning of this song, S sounds play a crucial role (lines 46–49):

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

Echoing the description of the sweet softness of the music is the soft sweetness generated by Tennyson’s use of sibilance. This softening effect signals a major shift in the poem’s tone as the mariners, now growing increasingly drowsy, seek their rest. By the time the mariners reach the end of their song, the sibilant effect of their language reaches another peak before softening yet further into the wispy quality of repeating W sounds (lines 171–73):

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.