That scant word makes the poem last a little longer. It also emphasizes the human presence of the speaker, a person whose perceptions and feelings are what this is finally all about. He is asking for patience, for grace, as he adjusts his eyes and heart to a stark new situation.

But how much time is “a little”? The split second it takes to utter that extra, unstressed “me”? However much is needed to heal all proverbial wounds? Or are we thinking in astronomical measures, as those stars invite us to suppose? In that case, it might take our poor stargazer more time than he has. Millions of years. Hundreds of millions!

What does it mean to exist as a solitary being in such a vast, incomprehensible cosmos? This may have been an especially timely question when this poem was written; early versions date from 1957, the year the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, marking the beginning of the space age. But poets have been looking at the sky for a very long time.

Some find comforting news of heaven, like William Wordsworth:

Others, like Ada Limón, see the projection of our own curiosity:

Occasionally a poet (Stephen Crane in this case) will hear an answer that makes Auden’s silent stars seem kind:

Auden himself came back to the subject a dozen years after “The More Loving One,” in a poem called “Moon Landing,” which ambivalently hailed the Apollo II mission as a “phallic triumph,” “a grand gesture” of male self-regard. And while he acknowledges the spirit of adventure behind the mission, he doesn’t admire the moon enough to want to see it up close:

He’d rather contemplate the moon above him — one who “still queens the Heavens” — than tread like Neil Armstrong on its dusty, lifeless surface. The feats of NASA and its astronauts belong to a world of science, politics and media spectacle; Auden prefers the realm of mythology and aesthetics.

He’s in good poetic company. In “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” Walt Whitman, at a lecture, finds himself “tired and sick” of charts and diagrams and scientific discourse.

He did not give a damn if they gave a damn.

For Auden, as for Whitman, demystifying the stars risks stripping them of their poetry. A sense of wonder flickers through “The More Loving One,” along with the wit and the romantic weariness. The poem concludes with an almost defiant commitment to awe, the search for sublimity in the heavens.

Stars or no stars, what matters is the attitude of the person below: receptive, yearning, more in love than he may be willing to admit, even if — or indeed because — he doesn’t quite know what it is he’s worshiping.

As we approach the end of the poem, our own feelings might be in a bit of tangle: admiration, amusement and something else that’s harder to pin down in words or themes. A feeling that, having spent time with a poem largely about solitude, we are less alone.

Let’s nail down those tricky last lines, and come back tomorrow to talk about the whole thing.

Your task today: Learn the final stanza!

Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.

Watch their full readings

Question 1/6

Let’s start with the first couplet in this stanza. Fill in the rhyming words.

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Were all stars to disappear or die, 

I should learn to look at an empty sky 

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skydie

Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.

Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.

Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.

Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.