In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
Answer: These lines have been quoted, from the poem “The Lotos Eaters” by Alfred Tennyson. Here the poet speaks of a strange land where the sailors of Ulysses happened to go.
After the war of Troy the Greek hero Ulysses is returning home. One day in the afternoon they reach an island. It is a strange land. In it the atmosphere is always dreamy. No activities of life is seen there. Everything in nature seems sleepy. A look of laziness and melancholy is marked everywhere. It seems that from the sunrise to the sunset the same condition prevails. In the afternoon the days work ends and people go to their respective homes for rest. The brightness of the day disappears. This is the normal condition. But in the island it is abnormal. People eat a fruit called loots and spend their days in a mood of lethargy and rest. The poet here describes the land to convey the mood of inaction and languor. It is a specialty of Tennyson’s art that he describes landscape as a reflection of the mind or feelings he wants to express. We notice this feature of his poetic art in these lines also.