Key Facts

• Title: The Lotos-eaters
• Poet: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
• Published: 1832, revised in 1842
• Literary Period: Victorian Age (1837-1901)
• Tone: Dreamy, melancholic, musical
• Form: A combination of narrative (telling a story) and choric song (like a chorus in a play)
• Rhyme Scheme: Varies

The poem was inspired by Tennyson’s trip to Spain with his close friend Arthur Hallam in 1829, where they visited the Pyrenees mountains. After the trip, he wrote poems like “The Lotos-Eaters,” “Oenone,” and “Mariana in the South.” Tennyson took the idea of “The Lotos-Eaters” from Homer’s epic “The Odyssey” (Book IX). In The Odyssey, the hero Odysseus (Ulysses) and his sailors reach an island where people eat a magical plant called the lotus. Whoever eats this plant forgets home and loses the desire to work or travel. They only want to stay there in peace and rest forever.