ABSTRACT
Published 1832. The important revisions in 1842 were the addition of ll. 114–32 and the rewriting of ll. 150–73. Written 1830–32 (Mem. i 86); T. dated ll. 8, 11, 42, as 1830. T.’s letter to W. H. Brookfield, mid-March 1832 (Letters i 70–1) has many filaments to the poem: ‘Hollo! Brooks, Brooks! for shame! what are you about — musing, and brooding and dreaming and opiumeating yourself out of this life into the next? … I think you mentioned a renewal of your acquaintance with the fishermen, which may possibly occur if you will leave off the aforesaid drug, if you do not I can foresee nothing for you but stupefaction, aneurism, confusion, horror and death’ (cp. ll. 105, 110, 128: ‘Eating the Lotos day by day / … To muse and brood and live again in memory / … There is confusion worse than death’). The main source was Odyssey ix 82–104: ‘We set foot on the land of the Lotus-eaters, who eat a flowery food. … So they went straightway and mingled with the Lotus-eaters, and the Lotus-eaters did not plan death for my comrades, but gave them of the lotus to taste. And whosoever of them ate of the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, had no longer any wish to bring back word or to return, but there they were fain to abide among the Lotus-eaters, feeding on the lotus, and forgetful of their homeward way. These men, therefore, I brought back perforce to the ships, weeping.’ T. jotted in H.Nbk 4 (1831–2): ‘Alzerbe’s isle / Where dwelt the folk that lotos eat erewhile.’ From Fairfax’s translation of Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered XV xviii. T. was influenced by Washington Irving’s Columbus (1828), the source of Anacaona (I 308); Irving describes the idyllic life on Haiti. For T.’s interest in Islands of the Blest, see Paden (pp. 141–3). Cp. The Hesperides (I 461), which mentions the lotusflute’; and The Sea-Fairies (I 278). Spenser was the major influence on the style and tone; note in particular the cave of Morpheus, Faerie Queene I i st. 41; the blandishments of Despair, I ix st. 40; the ‘Idle lake’ and its enervating island, II vi st. 10; and the mermaids and the Bower of Bliss, II xii st. 32. There are a few touches from James Thomson’s Spenserian imitation, The Castle of Indolence I v–vi: ‘And up the hills, on either side, a wood / Of blackening pines, ay waving to and fro, / Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood; / And where this valley winded out, below, / The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow. // A pleasing land of drowsyhed it was: / Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; / And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, / For ever flushing round a summer sky: / There eke the soft delights, that witchingly / Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast, / And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh; / But whate’er smacked of noyance, or unrest, / Was far far off expelled from this delicious nest.’ The earliest MS is H.Nbk 3, which breaks off at l. 98 (all variants are below, A). H.Lpr 131 (B) is likewise not in T.’s hand. There is a copy in Arthur Hallam’s hand at the University of Hawaii. E. Griffiths suggests as one source Horace, Odes II xi, quoted by T. in his earliest surviving letter (Oct. 1821?; Letters i 2): ‘Of which this is a free Translation “Why lie we not at random, under the shade of the plantain (sub platano) having our hoary head perfumed with rose-water”’ (Cambridge Review, 28 Jan. 1983).
