Thursday Short Poem: Auden's "More Loving One"

I've been alternating between putting up fairly obscure and fairly well-known poets lately, and it's time to focus on the latter.  This must be my fourth W.H. Auden poem in the past year, and likely, many readers know it.  But I've always loved it, and in college remember debating the second stanza with friends. 

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

When I was twenty, I thought Auden wrong.  Nothing, I believed, was worse than unrequited love.   Years later, I learned he was quite right.

Comments

[*Christopher]

Auden is one of those folks who was important to my formative years in highschool. I just posted on his life with Chester Kallman for pride month last week. One of the saints!

[Imma Fooker]

I found your site by typing into Google a couple lines from this poem. I plan on copying and pasting it onto a message board where some tard tried to pass off John Mayer lyrics as his own; and not even good John Mayer lyrics, if there is such a thing.

But that's beside the point. The point is: How can you be a democrat and a Christian at the same time? Oh yeah, and from one of your pictures it looks as though you have a rather large rat perched on your shoulder.

I'll hang up and listen.

[mythago]

Nothing, I believed, was worse than unrequited love. Years later, I learned he was quite right.

Hugo, I mean this in a nice way: you're still emotionally very young if you believe this correct.

[Hugo]

If emotional immaturity means placing myself in the company of Auden, mythago, I'll stand with old Wystan!

[ima robot]

I think the point of the peom is that admiration should not expect or deserve a reward, and that "love" does not entitle one to any rewards as such.

...that love is lonely business, best done by those with some measure of stength and perspective.

...that "love" does not expect a reward etc etc