Note 25 — Chapter XXIX

Tennyson in the “Lotus-eaters” has charmingly expressed the dreamy, languid feeling which the lotus food is said to have produced.

“How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream

With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half dream!

To dream and dream, like yonder amber light

Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;

To hear each others’ whispered speech;

Eating the Lotos, day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray:

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;

To muse and brood and live again in memory,

With those old faces of our infancy

Heaped over with a mound of grass,

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass.”