The Lotos-Eaters

The Lotos-Eaters, poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in the collection Poems (1832; dated 1833). The poem is based on an episode in Book 9 of Homer’s Odyssey.

Odysseus’s sailors, returning home after the fall of Troy, are forced to land in a strange country after a strong wind propels them past the island of Cythera. The inhabitants, “the mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters,” are sustained solely on the fruit of the lotus plant. The sailors, too, eat the fruit and lose all desire to continue their journey.