"They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of wife, and child, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one 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.'"
But the lotus of poetry is not the Nelumbium speciosum. There is some difficulty in identifying it with any modern plant; but the general opinion seems to be, that it was the Zizyphus lotus, a species allied to the Zizyphus jujuba, and included in the Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceæ).