THE LOTOS-EATERS / 1121
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
75 Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweetened with summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night,
so All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
4
Hateful is the dark blue sky,
85 Vaulted o'er the dark blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
90 Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
95 In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence?ripen, fall, and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.9
5
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
IOO 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-bush1 on the height;
To hear each other's whispered speech;
105 Eating the Lotos day by day, To watch the crisping0 ripples on the beach, curlingAnd tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
no 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!
6
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
115 And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears; but all hath suffered change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
9. Cf. The Faerie Queen 1.9.40: 'Sleepe after 1. Myrrh, a resin used in perfume and incense, is toyle, port after stormie seas, / Ease after warre, associated with sweetness and comfort, death after life does greatly please.'
120
125
BO
