LOTUS. 
177 
To hear each other’s whispered speech ; 
Eating the Lotus, 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. 
The Lotus blooms below the flowery peak ; 
The Lotus blows by every winding creek ; 
All day the wind breathes low, with mellower tone ; 
Through every hollow cave and alley lone, 
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotus 
dust is blown. 
We have had enough of action and of motion, we 
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge 
was seething free, 
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam foun¬ 
tains in the sea. 
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, 
In the hollow Lotus land to live and lie reclined 
On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind ; 
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled 
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly 
curled 
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming 
world. 
Surely, surely slumber is more sweet than toil; the 
shore 
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and 
oar ; 
Oh! rest ye, brother mariners; we will not wander more. 
8 * 
