Lotos Eaters

Other Poems

English · 1903 · 31m · Poetry, Myths

In The Lotos-Eaters, Tennyson reimagines an episode from Homer’s Odyssey: sailors reach a strange shore, taste the lotus, and lose their desire to return home.

The poem moves between the mariners’ languid song and the voices of those who question their retreat from duty and struggle. Its measured rhythms and recurring images of rest give the sailors’ longing a dreamlike pull, while the poem leaves room to consider what is gained—and abandoned—when effort and responsibility are set aside.

This audiobook presents Tennyson’s poem as a sustained meditation on weariness, escape, and the claims of home. It is a fit for listeners drawn to narrative poetry, classical myth, and verse whose atmosphere is as important as its story.