Taller To-day
Taller To-day - meaning Summary
Momentary, Shared Tranquillity
Auden's poem recalls walking in a calm orchard and contrasts that remembered, pastoral evening with harsher nights of snow and howling dead. Despite emotional distance—"no nearer each other"—the speakers share a present peace, warmed by lit farms and the end of the mill’s hammering. The poem registers a transient fulfillment: simple, ordinary comforts and acceptance provide a momentary sense of completion whether the hour is loved or endured.
Read Complete AnalysesTaller to-day, we remember similar evenings, Walking together in a windless orchard Where the brook runs over the gravel, far from the glacier. Nights come bringing the snow, and the dead howl Under headlands in their windy dwelling Because the Adversary put too easy questions On lonely roads. But happy now, though no nearer each other, We see farms lighted all along the valley; Down at the mill-shed hammering stops And men go home. Noises at dawn will bring Freedom for some, but not this peace No bird can contradict: passing but here, sufficient now For something fulfilled this hour, loved or endured.
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