Lotos Eaters

But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet—while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly—
With half-dropped eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill—
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

They offer an idyllic life, but also a permanent lapse of memory—a fate worse than death
for the Homeric hero. Is a hedonistic existence a fair trade for losing all hope of glory?
The image of the Lotus Eaters appears to be more popular as an allusion in various prose
works than as a trope in poetry.

Literature

Kunitz, Stanley. “Off Point Lotus.” The Poems of Stanley Kunitz 1928-1979. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1979. 130.

Green, Gerald. Lotus Eaters. NP, 1959.

Leiber, Fritz. “The Lotus Eaters.” Gummitch and Friends. Illus. Rodger Gerberding.
Hampton Falls, NH: Donald M. Grant, 1992. 222p. [Cats and science fiction.]

Maugham, W. Somerset. “The Lotus Eater.” Cakes and Ale, and Twelve Short Stories.
Intro Angus Wilson. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966. 512p. PR6025.A86L6

Stanton, Maura. "Autumn in the Land of the Lotus Eaters." Cries of Swimmers. Salt Lake
City: U of Utah P, 1984. 63.

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. "The Lotos-Eaters."

Weinbaum, Stanley. “The Lotus Eaters.” A Martian Odyssey. Ed. Sam Moskowitz. New
York: Lancer, 1962. 159p. [Science fiction.]

Other

Bartlett, Norman. Land of the Lotus Eaters: A Book Mostly about Siam. New York: Roy,
1959.