Auden Reads 'The More Loving One'

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DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Debbie Elliott.

Next week marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of poet W.H. Auden. To put you in the frame of mind for the science story up next, we bring you this Auden poem on nature, passion and indifference. It's called "The More Loving One."

Mr. W.H. AUDEN (Poet): 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.

ELLIOTT: That was W.H. Auden reading his 1958 poem, "The More Loving One."

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