74. ~Not once perceive~, etc. This was not the case with the followers of
Ulysses: see note, l. 52.
76. ~friends and native home forgot~. Circe's cup has here the effect
ascribed to the lotus in _Odyssey_ ix. "Now whosoever of them did eat
the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus had no more wish to bring tidings nor
to come back, but there he chose to abide with the lotus-eating men,
ever feeding on the lotus and forgetful of his homeward way." In
Tennyson's _Lotos-Eaters_ there is no forgetfulness of friends and home:
"Sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife and slave."
Masson also refers to Plato's ethical application of the story (_Rep._
viii.); "Plato speaks of the moral lotophagus, or youth steeped in
sensuality, as accounting his very viciousness a developed manhood, and
the so-called virtues but signs of rusticity." Compare also Spenser, _F.
Q._ ii. 12. 86, "One above the rest in speciall, That had an hog been
late, ... did him miscall, That had from hoggish form him brought to
natural."
77. ~sensual sty~: see note on l. 52. To those who, "with low-thoughted
care," are "unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives," the world becomes
little better than a sensual sty. This line is adverbial to _forget_.