“The Lotos-Eaters” has not one, but two speakers—or rather, two types of speakers. The first speaker is an anonymous figure who narrates the poem’s first section from a distanced third-person perspective. This speaker stands outside the story he or she is telling, recounting events without offering any additional commentary. That said, the speaker’s language is lush and evocative, suggesting a deeply poetic sensibility. This sensibility comes out with special clarity in the dreamy descriptions of the island’s topography, which accounts for most of the poem’s first section. Consider, as just one example, the sensuous sonic effects of the following passage in which the speaker describes the surreal streams that pour down slowly, like smoke (lines 10–13):

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.

In addition to the sonic density of the language, it’s also worth noting how in this passage the speaker maintains the regularity of both meter and rhyme. Speaking from outside the events of the poem, this first speaker privileges formal orderliness.

Things change, however, with the introduction of the “Choric Song” that begins after the initial five stanzas. Here, the anonymous third-person speaker of the first part disappears and is replaced by a collective speaker using the plural first-person pronoun, “we.” The Greek mariners whose landing on the island was described in the poem’s opening section have now taken over the poem and are singing their song. This song is much less-formally organized than the first section, which appropriately reflects the mariners’ increasing disinterest in discipline and strong preference for leisure. It’s also worth noting that, though speaking with one voice, the mariners move between different moods. One moment they’re celebrating the sweetness of rest, and the next moment they’re reflecting bitterly on the conditions of life that have forced them into such a long period of toil. What results from this oscillation is a powerful meditation on existential weariness and the peace that comes with rest and, eventually, with death. These men have toiled long enough, and now the drowsy effects of the lotos fruit have opened their eyes to the pleasure of leisure: “Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease” (line 98).

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