The Full Text of “The More Loving One”
The Full Text of “The More Loving One”
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“The More Loving One” Introduction
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"The More Loving One" is British poet W.H. Auden's wry, complex reflection on the indifference of the universe and the value of love. Gazing at the night sky, the poem's speaker understands that the stars "do not give a damn" about humanity and its feelings. On reflection, however, the speaker feels it's still worthwhile to be "the more loving one" in this unbalanced relationship: the person who loves the stars (or an "indifferen[t]" lover, for that matter) at least gets to experience love, and to make meaning from meaninglessness. This poem was first collected in Auden's 1960 book Homage to Clio.
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“The More Loving One” Summary
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The speaker, looking at the night sky, observes that the stars don't care one bit about humanity. But really, the speaker goes on, indifference is the least of anyone's problems in this world.
Wouldn't it be unpleasant, the speaker says, if the stars loved humanity desperately, but humanity couldn't love the stars back? No, if there can't be mutual love, the speaker would rather be the party who loves more deeply.
Much as the speaker thinks they love the indifferent stars, however, now that the speaker is looking at them, they don't think they could say that they missed any one in particular during the daytime.
If every single star vanished or burnt out, the speaker would figure out how to appreciate the beauty of a completely dark night sky—though it might take them a while.
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“The More Loving One” Themes
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The Pain and Beauty of Unrequited Love
The speaker of Auden's "The More Loving One" reflects that while love is often disappointing, it's still worthwhile. Personifying the stars as distant, indifferent beloveds, the speaker decides that, even if the stars don't "give a damn" about the speaker, the speaker will go on loving the stars (for a while, at least). Unrequited, imperfect, temporary, or painful love, this poem suggests, is better than no love at all.
"Looking up at the stars," the speaker is certain they're not looking back—an image that hints at the pain of unrequited love. The stars are traditional metaphors for true lovers: their steady shining evokes fidelity, their beauty the loveliness of a beloved's face. (See Romeo and Juliet or Keats's "Bright star" for two famous examples among many.) To this poem's speaker, though, the stars seem totally indifferent: "for all they care," the speaker says, "I can go to hell." If these stars represent a beloved, then it's a beloved who doesn't care a bit about the speaker, and the speaker is under no illusions about that.
However, the speaker reflects, this isn't the worst possible state of affairs: it's better to love something that doesn't love you back than to be the object of a "passion" that you can't return. "If equal affection cannot be"—that is, if the speaker and beloved can't feel the same way about each other—it's much better to be the "more loving one" than the indifferent party.
This declaration suggests that experiencing love, even unrequited love, is a good thing in itself. Being loved by someone whom you can't love back, the speaker observes, is merely uncomfortable. Loving someone who can't love you, on the other hand, can be just as rewarding as it is painful. Those stars might be indifferent, but they're still beautiful!
The speaker further suggests that unrequited love might also be worth enduring because, no matter what the stories say, love doesn't last forever. Even the most fervent "admirer" of the stars could learn to embrace the "total dark" if all of the stars were to "disappear or die." In other words, the speaker knows that their unrequited love isn't permanent or overpowering, and that they can get over it (though, as they understatedly note, "this might take me a little time"). The idea that love fades might feel a little deflating; equally, it might feel comforting.
Love, in this speaker's vision, isn't all it’s cracked up to be. It's often marred by "[un]equal affection," and it's nowhere near as constant as the stars: disappointed lovers get over their heartbreak, slowly but surely. All this imperfection, however, doesn't mean it's not worth taking on the burden of loving.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-16
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Meaning and Meaninglessness
Gazing up at the stars, the speaker of "The More Loving One" takes an unconventional poetic perspective on the heavens: "for all they care," the speaker says, "I can go to hell." The stars, this poem suggests, don't steer people's fates (as they’re traditionally said to). And yet, the fact that the universe is indifferent to humanity doesn't mean that humanity can or should be indifferent to the universe. People, this poem suggests, keep on finding ways to see the world as "sublime" and awe-inspiring even when old ideas about the meaning of life fade away.
The stars "do not give a damn" about the people who look up so lovingly at them, the speaker declares—an idea that counters a lot of old literary and religious traditions in which the stars symbolize the course of fate or the protective guidance of the gods. Yet even if the universe isn’t inherently meaningful, watchful, or caring, the speaker feels it's worthwhile to be "the more loving one": to see beauty and meaning in the stars despite the fact that the stars aren't looking lovingly back.
For that matter, the speaker goes on, it might be possible to find the beauty in a world without stars: to see the "total dark" of a night sky as "sublime," not terrifyingly empty. This image suggests an effort to find meaning in the world even when old ideas about meaning fade away altogether—for instance, through a loss of faith. It "might take […] a little time" to learn to see a new kind of beauty in a sky without those old, familiar guiding stars, the speaker suggests, but it’s not impossible.
Through these images of seeing astonishing, "sublime" beauty in indifferent stars or even-more-indifferent darkness, the poem suggests that being human means finding or making meaning in the world, even if the world doesn't offer one much encouragement in return.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-16
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The More Loving One”
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Lines 1-4
Looking up at ...
... man or beast."Looking up at the stars," the speaker of "The More Loving One" does not see what poets often do. To this speaker, the stars don't symbolize fate or love or the watchful eyes of the gods; there's no pattern up there, no order, no affection. "For all [the stars] care," the speaker feels sure, "I can go to hell."
In just these first two lines, then, readers learn a lot about the speaker's dry, ironic perspective on the relationship between humanity and the universe. To this speaker, the stars have nothing to do with people and nothing to say to them.
Declaring that the stars don't care a whit for stargazers, the speaker seems to feel that the world lacks inherent meaning or guidance. However, the speaker isn't going to make a big deal out of this vision of cosmic indifference. A different sort of person might bewail the horrific emptiness of a universe without meaning. This speaker's offhand, casual, slangy tone makes it clear that they see the unresponsive stars as a mere matter of fact, something that one "know[s] quite well." No sense in making a fuss about it.
In fact, the universe's indifference might even be a little funny. Alongside the comical "for all they care, I can go to hell," the poem's structure works a lot like a joke's. Each of this poem's four quatrains is written in couplets, every pair of rhymes hitting like a setup and punchline.
However, as readers will soon see, this poem's ironic wit becomes a vehicle for deep feeling—and for a serious philosophical question. How, this poem will ask, ought a person to live in the face of cosmic indifference?
Well, first of all, the speaker goes on, there's no reason to especially fear indifference; it's "the least / We have to dread from man or beast," far from the worst thing in the world. The understated reserve of this line invites readers to consider what the worst we have to dread might be. The notion of what "we have to dread from man or beast," in particular, might suggest a dreadful beastliness in both humanity and nature: plain old brutish violence.
The juxtaposition of indifferent stars and the fear of "man or beast" hints at a dark unease. For all that this poem's tone is light and wry, there's another serious question implied here: if the heavens aren't watching over humanity, what will keep people human?
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Lines 5-8
How should we ...
... one be me. -
Lines 9-12
Admirer as I ...
... terribly all day. -
Lines 13-16
Were all stars ...
... a little time.
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“The More Loving One” Symbols
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The Stars
Stars are traditional symbols of fate, love, and the gods. In this poem, however, they play the opposite role. To this speaker, the stars reflect not meaning and feeling, but the pure "indifference" of an unfeeling and meaningless universe.
This poem's personified stars might also suggest an indifferent lover: a person the speaker feels deeply for, but who "does not give a damn" about the speaker.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2
- Lines 5-6
- Lines 9-10
- Lines 13-15
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“The More Loving One” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Personification
In the very first lines of the poem, the speaker personifies the stars:
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,On one level, the speaker is making a point about an uncaring universe here, saying that the stars are utterly unresponsive to humanity. The speaker portrays the stars not merely as unfeeling balls of gas blazing in the night, however, but also as figures who could care and simply do not. These "stars that do not give a damn" sound an awful lot like a person who's indifferent to the speaker.
That idea gathers steam when the speaker asks:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?Note that no mention of "passion" appeared in the first stanza! Yet the way the speaker phrases these lines, implies a turnabout: "What if the stars were in love with us, the way we're in love with the stars?" In other words, the stars here suggest not just any indifferent person, but someone with whom the speaker is in unrequited love.
This personification helps to give this poem its subtle depth of feeling. While the speaker's voice sounds wry, the distancing image of the stars suggests a person trying to manage a painful romantic disappointment by philosophizing about it.
Where personification appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2: “Looking up at the stars, I know quite well / That, for all they care, I can go to hell,”
- Lines 5-6: “How should we like it were stars to burn / With a passion for us we could not return?”
- Line 10: “stars that do not give a damn”
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Understatement
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Rhetorical Question
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Irony
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"The More Loving One" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Indifference
- Sublime
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(Location in poem: Lines 3-4: “But on earth indifference is the least / We have to dread”)
A lack of caring or interest.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The More Loving One”
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Form
Like many of Auden's poems, "The More Loving One" uses a traditional form to explore a complex, arch, witty, and understatedly melancholy idea. Written in four quatrains of rhymed couplets, the poem has the rhythms and sounds of an old song—or perhaps a series of dry jokes, every couplet a setup and punchline.
This simple form puts a mild face on a complicated progression of thoughts. The speaker wanders through several ideas over the poem's four short stanzas:
- That the heavens are indifferent to humanity;
- That it's better that the heavens should be indifferent to humanity than the other way around;
- That, honestly, the speaker can't claim such a deep or abiding love of the heavens anyway;
- And that, were the stars to completely vanish, the speaker might learn to love utter darkness in their place.
The poem's form suggests that loving that which can't love you back—and learning to find something "sublime" even in the absence of a beloved—is a common, absurd, and ruefully funny human predicament.
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Meter
"The More Loving One" is written in accentual tetrameter. That means that each of its lines uses four strong beats, but doesn't stick to any particular flavor of metrical foot.
For instance, listen to the rhythms of line 2:
That, for all | they care, | I can go | to hell,
Here, those four steady beats per line appear alongside plenty of snappy, pattering unstressed syllables, through a mixture of anapests (metrical feet with a da-da-DUM rhythm, as in "at the stars") and iambs (feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "to hell"). The quick-paced density of the rhythm here helps to give these lines their casual, dryly funny tone: the speaker's voice sounds rather jaunty even in a description of the indifferent universe.
Compare that busy rhythm to the simplicity of lines 9-10:
Admi- | rer as | I think | I am
Of stars | that do | not give | a damn,Here, the poem resolves into straight-ahead iambic tetrameter, four iambs per line—a fittingly even, steady tone for the speaker's honest admission that, really, their admiration of the stars only goes so far.
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Rhyme Scheme
"The More Loving One" is written in rhymed couplets, like this:
AABB
In other words, each quatrain uses two paired rhymes in a row:
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well (A)
That, for all they care, I can go to hell, (A)
But on earth indifference is the least (B)
We have to dread from man or beast. (B)This rhyme scheme lends itself to humor: each of the speaker's dry assertions about the indifferent stars resolves with a punchline.
Sometimes, of course, those punchlines feel more rueful than hilarious. Consider the rhymes in the lines from which the poem draws its title:
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.Auden could have phrased the same idea all sorts of different ways—"Let me be the more loving one," to name the most obvious example. By saving up the revelation that the speaker would prefer the "more loving one" to be "me," attracting attention to the word with the end rhyme, the poem deepens the poignancy of this moment. What the speaker wishes for, after all, is not quite ideal: it's a preference one only has to state "if equal affection cannot be."
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“The More Loving One” Speaker
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Readers might be tempted to read this poem's first-person speaker as Auden himself. Certainly, the speaker uses Auden's rueful, elegant voice. Auden or not, this speaker takes an Audenish perspective on the world's beauties and sorrows.
Reflecting on the stars' indifference to worshipful humanity, the speaker decides it's preferable to be the "more loving one" in any unevenly balanced relationship—a decision that suggests the speaker has had some experience on both sides of the romantic scales. That sense that it's better to love unrequitedly than to be disagreeably beloved reflects a quiet embrace of strong feeling in spite of indifference.
That feeling, though, is just about concealed beneath a tone of dry resignation. Even if all the stars winked out, the speaker declares at the end of the poem, it might just about be possible to discover the beauty in the darkness they left behind—"though this might take me a little time."
This worldly-wise speaker knows that things don't always go quite as one might wish: "equal affection" often "cannot be." But even denied their wishes, the speaker feels driven to find sublimity in the dark.
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“The More Loving One” Setting
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It would be fair to say that "The More Loving One" could take place anywhere that the stars shine. It would be equally fair to say that it takes place in the speaker's imagination.
The poem certainly treats its perspective as universal. For all the stars care, the speaker feels, everyone can "go to hell." But the speaker's wish to be "the more loving one" in any unequally balanced relationship hints that the speaker sees the stars through the lens of personal experience. To this speaker, it's better to love something that can't love you back than to feel no love at all.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The More Loving One”
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Literary Context
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) had such a distinctive and unusual poetic voice that many critics see him as a school of his own: he and his contemporaries Cecil Day-Lewis, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, and Louis MacNeice are sometimes classed together as the "Auden group."
Unlike many of the Modernist poets of his generation, Auden didn't abandon metered poetry for free verse. Instead, Auden was a great proponent of old poetic forms, plain and approachable language, and light verse. Poetry, he believed, didn't have to be highfalutin to be meaningful. His poems often deal with death and suffering in a voice that's equal parts crisp, witty, and melancholic. He also delighted in writing everything from pantoums to villanelles to scandalous limericks.
Auden was particularly interested in music, and wrote not only poems that responded to musical traditions (like "As I Walked Out One Evening," which quotes old ballads in its first lines), but libretti—that is, lyrics for operas or pieces of classical music. He was also a noted essayist, and his book The Dyer's Hand collects his reflections on the art and craft of poetry. Some of these he wrote when he was Oxford University's Professor of Poetry, a ceremonial position awarded to notable writers and critics.
Auden remains a well-known and well-loved poet. Writers like James Merrill and John Ashbery credit him as a major influence, and his poetry even makes some famous appearances in pop culture.
Historical Context
Auden lived through some of the most chaotic years of the 20th century: he saw two world wars, the Great Depression, and the post-war cultural upheaval of the 1950s and 1960s. With this backdrop, perhaps it makes sense that the late collection in which this poem appears, Homage to Clio (1960), reflects on history.
"The More Loving One," however, doesn't feel attached to any particular place or time (though the speaker's voice does suggest Auden's own 20th-century middle-class Englishness). Rather, it draws on—and questions—the ancient symbolism of the stars.
Some of the poem's thoughts on love, however, might reflect Auden's own experiences; he suffered terribly over his longest and most serious romantic relationship. His great love, fellow poet Chester Kallman, couldn't commit to the monogamy Auden needed. Although the pair lived together on and off until Auden's death, what Auden called their "marriage" (though gay marriages weren't legally recognized at the time) ended in 1941. Auden well knew what it was to feel like the "more loving one."
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More “The More Loving One” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to Auden reading this poem aloud in his wonderful laconic voice.
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Auden in a short biography from the Poetry Foundation.
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Auden's Legacy — Visit the Auden Society's website to learn what contemporary scholars are saying and thinking about Auden.
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A Celebration of Auden — Listen to a radio program about Auden in which he reads from his collected works.
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An Interview with Auden — Read an interview with Auden and learn more about his poetic philosophy (and his sense of humor).
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LitCharts on Other Poems by W. H. Auden
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