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.

Lines 28–36 comprise the complete fourth stanza of the poem’s opening section. This is an example of what’s known as a “Spenserian stanza,” which Tennyson borrowed from the sixteenth-century English poet Edmund Spenser. This unique stanza form, which Spenser developed for his epic poem The Faerie Queene, follows a highly-regulated form in terms of both meter and rhyme. Aside from its formal features, this stanza is significant for its narration of the event that causes the mariners to consider giving up their homeward journey. What’s odd, though, is that the speaker offers no description of the lotos fruit’s appearance or flavor. Despite going on at length in the previous stanzas about the complex topography of this island, here the speaker avoids giving any detail about the mysterious fruit. All we know is that it grows on an “enchanted stem” and that, judging from its drowsy effects, it possesses mind-altering powers similar to the poppy. This lack of description is a conspicuous departure from the Odyssey, where Homer describes the lotos as having a “honey-sweet taste.” In Tennyson’s poem, by contrast, the sweetness of the lotos is displaced onto other phenomena that the mariners experience after they’ve eaten the fruit.

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.

These well-known lines (46–52) open the first stanza of the Choric Song, which is sung collectively by the mariners. The English composer Edward Elgar famously set this passage to music in the first decade of the twentieth century, writing a work for two choirs singing in different keys. Elgar’s take on this passage responds to a doubling at play in the Choric Song, the stanzas of which alternate thematically between the sweetness of rest and the bitterness of toil. The opening stanza inaugurates this antiphonal structure with a clear emphasis on sweetness. Note, for example, that the word “sweet” appears twice in this same sentence—once in the first line and again in the last. This emphasis on sweetness may be understood as a rhetorical displacement of the sweetness of the lotos fruit. That is, instead of describing the taste of the fruit, Tennyson focuses on the more generalized sensation of sweetness created by the fruit’s drowsy effects. Coaxed into rest by the lotos, the weary mariners set aside their labors and, for the first time in a long time, have an opportunity to take pleasure in the world around them.

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. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

These lines come from the fourth stanza of the Choric Song (lines 88-98), where the mariners reflect on how every life cycle ends in death. In a sense, this reflection develops from an image they presented in the previous stanza, where they contemplate the cycle of a flower in “…its allotted length of days / The flower ripens in its place, / Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil” (lines 80–82). This earlier passage not only details the full cycle of the flowering fruit as it develops, ripens, and falls, but also positively affirms how the fruit gets to spend its life cycle in a relative state of rest. In the fourth stanza, then, the mariners express their desire to pass the remainder of their lives in a similar state of rest. They make this desire clear in part through the refrain they repeat three times: “Let us alone.” They also establish a metaphorical link between themselves and the ripening fruit of the previous stanza, suggesting that they, like all other things, should “have rest” and be allowed to “ripen toward the grave / In silence” (lines 96–97). In making this last point, the mariners reference a common poetic trope that equates death with sleep, such that dying becomes a matter of “dreamful ease.”

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.

These three lines (lines 171–173), which close the mariners’ Choric Song, also close the poem as a whole. In terms of content, these lines express the mariners’ final resignation as they pledge to remain on the island and not resume their journey home to Ithaca. But equally important to the content of these lines is the form. First, note how each of these lines exceeds the average line length in the rest of the poem. An important feature of the Choric Song is its irregularity in terms of line lengths. Yet however erratic the line lengths may be, they generally tend to be on the shorter side, somewhere between three and five feet. These lines, by contrast, each consist of either six or seven feet—an expanded length that reflects the growing sense of weariness and lethargy among the mariners. Second, consider the sonic qualities of the language in this passage. The first two lines both feature a significant amount of sibilant S and SH sounds, which produces a hushing quality that powerfully echoes the mariners’ desire for “slumber.” In the third line, this sibilance disappears, transitioning into the yet softer, wispy quality of repeating W sounds.

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