The More Loving One

For the wedding of my friends Luigi Bernas and Luli Arroyo, I quoted in my homily two lines from a poem by W. H. Auden, which I had picked up from a novel by Alexander McCall Smith. Smith gently suggests through a character in his novel that the meaning of kindness is best captured by two lines of Auden:

If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me. 

Luigi emailed me today from Australia, asking for a copy of the poem—which I had never seen in its entirety. After finding the poem and reading it through, I now realize that while Smith aptly linked the two lines to kindness, in fact, they are not so much about kindness, but about the decision to love even if one is not loved in return. 

Here is the poem, written by Auden in 1957:

The More Loving One

by W. H. Auden

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. 


This is a sad and brave poem about accepting the suffering of unrequited love—an experience that Auden was apparently familiar with. In this poem, he makes his peace with his experience of “stars” whose beauty inspires such passion and longing, but which care nothing for him in return. 

Being treated with indifference is not so bad, Auden says, in the first stanza; there are worse things in life. To love, even if one is not loved back, is more than enough, he suggests in the second stanza. And, in the final two stanzas, Auden tells himself that even if that which one loves were to disappear from one’s life, one would survive the grief and the emptiness—even if, as he poignantly understates it in the last line, being reconciled with that loss may “take a little time.”