The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Auden, W.H. "The More Loving One” from Homage to Clio. Random House, 1960.

Note that parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“The More Loving One” is a fifteen-line poem published in 1960 about the complicated feelings that surface when one person in a partnership cares more for their partner than the partner cares for him or her. The poem begins with a cynical tone where the narrator describes gazing at the stars that surely will not gaze back or notice if anything should befall him or her. The speaker comes to accept that true love and yearning can bring pain, and that there is a strength in continuing to love even when the feelings cannot be returned in equal or greater strength. When the poem closes, the speaker ends on a more hopeful note of learning to enjoy looking at an empty sky if all the stars were to disappear – an analogy for continuing to feel with depth despite the risk of unrequited love.