The Lotos-Eaters
It was inspired by his trip to Spain with his close friend Arthur Hallam, where they visited the Pyrenees mountains.
The poem describes a group of mariners who, upon eating the lotos, are put into an altered state and isolated from the outside world.
During this time, they are isolated from the world:[4] 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) The mariners explain that they want to leave reality and their worldly cares:[4] Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness?
(lines 57–69) The mariners demonstrate that they realise what actions they are committing and the potential results that will follow, but they believe that their destruction will bring about peace:[5] Let us alone.
This relationship continues until the very end when the narrator describes their brotherhood as they abandon the world:[6] Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world; Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho’ the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whisper’d—down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
As James Kincaid argues, "in this poem the reader takes over the role of voyager the mariners renounce, using sympathy for a sail and judgment for a rudder.
In particular, the April 1833 review by John Croker stated that The Lotos-Eaters was "a kind of classical opium-eaters" and "Our readers will, we think, agree that this is admirable characteristic; and that the singers of this song must have made pretty free with the intoxicating fruit.
How they got home you must read in Homer: — Mr Tennyson — himself, we presume, a dreamy lotos-eater, a delicious lotus-eater — leaves them in full song.
"[11] The British romantic composer Edward Elgar set to music the first stanza of the "Choric Song" portion of the poem for a cappella choir in 1907-8.
Another British romantic composer Hubert Parry wrote a half-hour-long choral setting of Tennyson's poem for soprano, choir, and orchestra.
"There’s the great English poem about the lotus eaters, who sit by the river and — I guess it’s supposed to be about opium — never are involved in life.
[13] In episode 5 of HBO's series The White Lotus, Armond recites Choric Song IV of Tennyson's poem.
