Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.

Lowell’s sentence captures the psychological and poetic tendency to idealize what is gone. The past, once safely beyond the reach of correction or disappointment, can appear “fairer” than it felt when lived. By imagining the past as an “inaccessible tower,” he emphasizes its distance and unassailability: we cannot re-enter it, only gaze up at it. “Longing” personified as leaning and beckoning suggests nostalgia’s seductive pull—memory selectively edits experience into something alluring, inviting us to desire what cannot be recovered. The line thus warns that yearning is often fueled less by reality than by retrospective enchantment, and that the beauty we attribute to bygone times may be a creation of distance.