The Lotos-Eaters — Vocabulary
Alfred Tennyson
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  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.†1 more

  And round about the keel with faces pale,
  Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
  The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.†1 more

  All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
  We only toil, who are the first of things,
  And make perpetual moan,
  Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
  Nor ever fold our wings,
  And cease from wanderings,
  Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
  Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
  "There is no joy but calm!"†

  All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
  Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.†

  some, like a downward smoke,
  Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
  And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
  Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.†

  We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
  Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
  Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.†

  But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
  Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
  Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
  Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
  Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
  Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
  Till they perish and they suffer—some,'tis whisper'd—down in hell
  Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
  Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.†

  But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
  Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
  Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
  Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
  Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
  Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
  Till they perish and they suffer—some,'tis whisper'd—down in hell
  Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
  Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.†

  But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
  Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
  Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
  Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
  Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
  Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
  Till they perish and they suffer—some,'tis whisper'd—down in hell
  Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
  Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.†

Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.