hello friends welcome back to yet another session with me today i have taken the poem the lotus eaters by alfred lord tennyson lord tennyson as you know is the most prominent of the victorian poets and he had a very long literary career the span of his career was pretty long he lived up to 82 years and he had actually started writing poetry when he was very little by the time he was 12 years he had written an epic poem which amounted to almost 6 000 lines and then he never really stopped writing though he kind of kept away from publishing his poems for a spell of nine years he continued to write and he uh emerged to become or emerged as the most eminent poet of the victorian era and he was considered the national poet and he was a man who lived through the entire victorian period and victorian period was a turbulent time of a lot of changes and all that happened during the victorian era can be seen you can read in his poems about all the changes that happened then so he is the most representative poet of his age so now talking about the poem the lotus eaters it was published in 1832 when we think of what exactly prompted him to write this poem one is that he had visited spain with his friend with his very close and dear friend are the henry hallem and it is this very other henry harlam who died very young a few years later and tennyson wrote the poem in memoriam to commemorate this friend of his and so when he visited spain and the pyrenees mountains he was awe struck by the scenic beauty of the land and that is believed to be one inspiration for this poem and to others written along with this and this was published first in 1832 and then a revised version came out in 1842 and yet another source of inspiration for this poem was greek mythology and the story of ulysses or the odyssey you know in odc you have the character called odysseus who is also known as ulysses and i guess most of you would have read the poem ulysses by alfred lord tennyson which is the most anthologized of his poems and here too in this poem we have ulysses as a main character there but there is not much of action attributed to odysseus here and so there is this incident now you know the story of ulysses please don't get confused when i say ulysses and odysseus both of them refer to the same person in book 9 of the odyssey homer has written now this story of the odyssey it happened somewhere in the 12 000 and 1180 bc and there in book nine this whole book is about this adventure of odysseus that is why the book is called odc and there is this these people that is ulysses and his band of warriors they are returning from troy after the battle of troy when helen of troy was taken away by paris the prince of troy and she was the wife of manolos and so all the greek heroes and warriors they went to support manolos and so paris and his party lost the war and it was a long drawn-out war of almost 10 years and now they are on their journey back to their home in itaka the island of ithaca is where ulysses belongs and all the people along with him are also from itaka and they're all going back to itaka and this going back this journey again takes another 10 years because in the course of the trojan war and even before that a lot of events happen that is what is the main story of the iliad and many things happened and somehow or the other ulysses had made enemies with a few gods and goddesses in the greek mythology we know that there are a lot of gods and goddesses who are very touchy very sensitive who get angry and who take revenge that kind of gods and so ulysses had trouble with a few of them and they kept passing impediments and obstacles on his way back and uh so the journey it took i should say voyage not the journey because it's a sea uh journey and so it's a voyage and uh it takes a long time almost 10 years and it is these adventures that is described elaborately in the book called the odyssey and so what happens in book nine of the odc is that our man and his band of warriors his sailors their ship has been kind of it has been blown uh away out of their path by the stray winds and there's a strong wind they cannot control their ship and so the for nine days the ship is just floating aimlessly in the sea and finally on the tenth day they look out and they see land far away and they are relieved and so that is how the poem begins with their landing in this particular island and this island again is believed to be the island citera somewhere maybe in north africa according to the odyssey but here in this poem nothing is said about the the the whereabouts it's just only the beauty of the island is described and the topography is described we don't really know which island he's talking about and again the lotus eaters in this form the lotus okay maybe i'll come to that later and now the poem is divided into two parts the first five stanzas and the first five stanzas are all nine line stances what you would call this pencilian stencil this is the stanza pattern stansack pattern that was used by edmund spencer in his fairy queen and it comprises of eight iambic pentameter lines and one last alexandrine okay and the rhyme scheme of this nine line stanza is a b a b b c b c and c so first part comprises of five nine lined stances now the second part has a title it is called coric song and that has eight stanzas but here these eight stanzas are of varying length and there is no what a standard rhyme scheme there all the eight stanzas are different in their length and in their rhyme scheme so the second part is a is titled choric song and has eight stanzas and so the poem begins uh with this leader it's elise's most probably he is pointing out they're still in the ship and he's pointing out to the land and now the people you can imagine eight nine days of just roaming around aimlessly in the sea they had lost all hope that they reached somewhere they thought they'd all die hungry and so that is when they see land and so the leader or ulysses tries to encourage them tries to boost them boost their declining draining morale and so he tells them courage that he points to the island and says so i have begun the first stanza courage he said and pointed towards the land this mountain wave will roll us shorewood soon so he assures them that we are going to reach the land and finally in the afternoon because when you are at sea the land seems closer than it really is and so by afternoon they finally came to the land they reached that island and there it was a very special island because it seemed always afternoon see what is very beautiful or special about this poem is that one thing it is very very beautiful it's so scenic because all that he saw in spain that landscape he rise to present here before us so beautifully and one thing it's as i said it's beautiful and the tone the tone is very slow it is sluggish it is so porific as you would see it kind of induces a lethargy and a kind of a drowsiness and what is amazing is that tennyson has managed to write the poem in such a way that a reader who reads the poem would feel the same drowsiness and would feel the same sluggishness i wonder how the poet has managed to do that anyway you will understand better of what i'm saying when you listen to the poem and the poem is very it's rich in imagery all kind of imagery it's highly visual because you it's so colorful you can see everything that you can see the poem see in inverted you know though you read it you can see it and his friend ada hallam called this poem a picturesque poem it's almost like a postcard on which you can see a picture and uh so the the picture also matches the picture and the tone and everything you know it matches with the dominant emotion of the poem which is sluggishness and slowness and drowsiness so the poem courage he said and pointed towards the land and so okay they landed there and they came onto a land bitsy which it seemed in which it seemed always afternoon so it was a kind of a yellowish glow there almost like afternoon all around the coast the language aired its moon now afternoon itself you know is a time when all of us feel quite drowsy after lunch it's a time when all of us feel that it would be nice if you could take a siesta or a short nap so the purpose of setting this poem in the time of the afternoon itself you know he has done it with a purpose and he describes the place to us everything all around you look all around there was a languid air or it is hot and so everything is kind of languid lifeless slow breathing like one that at the very dream okay so air seems to be breathing a slow breath as if you are seeing a dream a very weary and a tiresome dream and in the afternoon too you can see the full faced moon full faced above the valley stood the moon and like a downward smoke the slender stream along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did see so from the place where they are standing far away they may be may are standing on some kind of an elevated ground maybe on a hilltop or a mount and from there far away into the island they can see a distant waterfall and the way the waterfall falls down it looks like downward smoke because you know that waterfall it it looks white and it's hazy because it's moving and the falling and passing and falling you know that is it is so true i don't know how many of you have watched a waterfall from a distance from a long distance it's not just standing far away but maybe a few kilometers away you see this thing far off and this is exactly how you would see the waterfall the movement of the waterfall you would feel as if the water is falling down in steps it falls and then it stops it falls and it stops so that that motion of the fall of skating of the water it is so beautifully portrayed i don't think anybody can say it more you know correctly and more beautifully than this along the cliff to fall and pass and fall did seem it's only an optical illusion because it doesn't fall that it looks the distance make it appear so and then he says they looked around they must have explored the island because they want to know where they have reached and it is a land of streams there are many many many streams flowing some like a downward smoke slow dropping whales of thinness lawn did go lawn again is a material okay it's not the lawn that we have in front of our houses the grassy lawn it's not that it's a material that he's talking about so the waterfalls are like whales of thinnest lawn very lacy la cy lazy kind of material some are waterfalls and then you and some through wavering lights and shadows broke rolling a slumberous sheet of foam below and some are more slow and light is playing on the waters and they are first some are just falling very lazily as if it is slumberous feeling sleepy and then they saw a gleaming river seawater there is another big river that is flowing towards the sea and again far away they can see three uh mountains three silent pinnacles of aged snow why does he say aged snow because it looks as if that snow has been there forever and the three silent pinnacles stood sunset flushed because there is this yellow sunset light falling on the snow so it stands sunset flushed and dewed with showery drops you have showery drops of dew also or it is spotted with moisture that's what he means and uh he can also see the pine forest so down up cloam cloam i think is the past tense of claim claimed up claimed so he has coined the word up cloam the shadow in pine tree because we know that in mountainous and in cold regions it is in the higher reaches off the mountain as the mountain goes higher that is where you have pine trees all the other vegetation stops in the lower levels of the hills so here below you see a woven cups and up in the higher levels of the higher reaches of the mountain you see the pine forests the shadowy pine because far from far they look very shadowy or hazy and here you can see a word cups c-o-p-s-e so let me take this opportunity to introduce you to similar words there so c-o-p-s-e cups is actually a small thicket or a wooded region a small wooded region it's not exactly a thick forest but then a place an area where a lot of trees are there it's called the cups then what other word do we know which is very similar to this which has almost a similar pronunciation we have cops c-o-r-p-s-e cops a corpse is a dead body a lifeless okay so that is the cops and then you we also have cop cop which is the word that we use it's a colloquial usage for a policeman a cop he's a cop okay that is their cop and then there is also another one which many of us pronounce as cops c-o-r-p-s but it is wrongly pronounced as cops now this is what ncc you know what the ncc stands for it is a national cadet cops cops that is how most of us pronounce it but actually it is cars a car is a military organization so the ncc is not the national cadet cops but it is the national cadet course c-o-r-p-s the p is silent there okay so this is how we uh you know enhance our vocabulary when you get a word when we just investigate and find more words with a similar pronunciation or a similar meaning or similar spelling it makes it easier for you to learn a few more words so he says so this is what they see they see waterfalls and they see this cups and the mountains and all that and the charmed sunset lingered low down in the red west so then slowly it is evening and the whole western part has become red through mountain clefts the dale was seen far inland and the yellow down bordered with palms so far away they can see a very downy kind of place with grass and such things and it's bordered with palm trees and they can see valleys and meadows set with slender gallingale galengale is a kind of a grass it's very commonly seen in our places it almost looks like a miniature coconut tree it has what do you the top part of this plant is almost resembles a coconut tree that plant is called a gallingale and it like if you walk through this gallinger it sticks onto your cloth sticks onto your socks and your skirt so that is gallingale and so they can see areas of gallingale and a land where all things almost seem the same always seem the same and round about the keel with faces pale dark faces pale against that rosy flame the mild-eyed melancholy lotus eaters came and so they uh have just got down from the ship heel is the front part of the ship so they have come got got down from the ship uh they have elected from the ship and the natives of that land they come forward to meet these people they are dark faces so because as i told you in the odyssey this island was somewhere in africa so people with dark skin they come but they're all pale against the rosy flame the rosy flame might be the flame of the sun or the setting sun and they are all melancholy very quiet they don't display any kind of excitement at seeing these newcomers so they just come there they very mild passive and they have something with them branches they bore of that enchanted stem laden with flower and fruit so they as when they come they have brought along with them a special kind of a plant which these people have not really seen these people from the ship ulises and his men this plant is new to them and so he they as a sign of welcome they gave each one of them this fruit and this flower and uh i think we also it's good to remember that this load don't picture lotus as we have here the tamara or tamara or kamal don't ever imagine that in the place of this lotus this is something else we don't know the identity of this particular it's maybe a fancy kind of a imaginary plant it is definitely not the lotus that we have in our mind and so um the lotus flower and fruit they bring it and they give it to each one of them so all of them took it maybe because when somebody gives you something you take it and some of them they tasted it also because they were asked to eat it and so they in odc it says that this fruits were very tasty it was sweet it tasted like dates sweet and juicy like dates that is what is said in the odc so here he doesn't say anything about the day about how it tastes so what happened to the people who tasted this fruit to him the gushing of the way far away it seemed to moan and rave on alien shows and if his fellow speak his voice was thin his voice is from the grave and deep asleep he seemed it all awake and music in his ears his beating heart did peak so then what happened to the people who ate it some of them would have readily very readily eaten what they got some people are a little careful so ulysses was very ulysses did not right away eat the fruit so he just held it maybe in his hand and we can picture all these things you know and but uh some others immediately soon and must they must have been very hungry too because they've been roaming around for a long time and so as soon as they got it they ate it and what happened when they ate it was that they couldn't hear what their friends were saying they seem to be in deep deep sleep but they're awake and in their years the only music that they can hear is the beating of their hearts so that that was an immediate impact of the eating of this particular fruit and then these uh we've come to the stand fifth stanza and so these people they started feeling very drowsy they immediately sat there on this yellow sand between the sun and the moon and upon the shore and sweet it was dream of father land of child and wife and slave but ever more most weary seemed to see weary the ore theory the wandering fields of barren form then someone said we will return no more and all at once they sang our island home is far beyond the wave we will no longer roam so all these people who ate this fruit they just sat down there and they remembered their fatherland and their wives and children and everything but and the slave course because those days greeks the noble greeks used to have slaves so they could remember all of them but then they suddenly felt that they just didn't want to go back because going back home home was far away and going back is a long journey across a bar and foam baron foam here means the sea and so one of them suddenly said let's not go back let's all just sit here because the island is too far away and we will no longer roam okay so that is the end of the first part and here in this section and all these stances you have so many words that spell of sluggishness and slowness because we have the word right from the beginning you have this languid air then always afternoon afternoon itself i told you signifies uh slowness and drowsiness and then you have the word weary dream and the falling of the waterfall is fall and paws and then slow dropping whales slumberous sheet everything is slow so slow and the sunset is lingering as though it doesn't want to go off and the people again are pale and they are melancholy and so there is this air of slowness everywhere so this is what happens in part one