Auden's If I Could Tell You
Many poets have used the form of a villanelle to express their feelings and ideas: Elizabeth Bishop used it to advise on the art of losing; Oscar Wilde used it to inform about Theocritus; Sylvia Plath used it to give admonitions to her readers. Though the villanelle is a fairly rigid structure having strict rules of rhyme, meter, and repetition, it can be utilized to bring depth and beauty to a meaning or idea. In W.H. Auden's poem, "If I Could Tell You," he uses the formal elements of the villanelle to contribute to his central theme of the fickleness and ravages of time: the slight variations on the mostly iambic pentameter, the repetition of certain lines, the rhyme pattern of repeated masculine sounds, and the overall structure of five tercets and a quatrain all work together to show that while time affects everyone and everything, it will give no hints nor help to the inevitable processes of life, especially death.A villanelle is typically a poem of fixed meter; and although this poem is primarily in iambic pentameter, there do exist a few lines that employ the use of dactyls. "Time will say nothing but I told you so," the first line of the poem, has an unusual metric pattern of two dactyls and two iambs; "Time only knows t
This fixed repetition, rather than being rigid and awkward, adds depth to the meaning, because each time the first and third lines are repeated, the line becomes more meaningful in respect to the new ways in which they are being applied. " These masculine rhymes provide a hard and final closing to each line, a consistently simple end to a complex line. In the fourth stanza, "time will say nothing" as to the origin of the winds, as to the reasons why leaves decay; in the last stanza, "time will say nothing" when our source of life and our protection leave. And overall, this fickleness of time contrasts with the seemingly dependable and loyal nature of the speaker, who says, "If I could tell you I would let you know," almost as if the speaker has already endured every effect of time, including death, and is trying to advise and warn others so they will be more prepared. Each new stanza in which the lines are repeated add a new application and perspective, thus enhancing the central idea that time will not help with the confusing or unhappy things in life, even though it affects them all. Because each line's final word rhymes so exactly and simply with the other words, the poem is satisfying to listen to and nearly lullaby-like, again an enormous contrast with the complex idea of time as an unreliable and unhelpful causer of all major events in life. These rhymes also reflect the overall simple diction of the poem: there are no difficult or polysyllabic words to contrast with the inherently difficult and hard to grasp meaning. In a villanelle, the first and third lines of the first tercet repeat alternately as the refrain closing in the succeeding stanzas, and also as the final couplet. The first line, as it is repeated throughout the poem, continues to provide contrast and variation to the otherwise steady iambic pentameter, insinuating that throughout life, time remains varying and almost untrustworthy-it will say nothing about why we weep or why the leaves decay or inevitably, why we die. Auden adheres fairly strictly to the formal elements of a villanelle, his meaning and tone is not compromised at all. These two lines begin with a stressed syllable to emphasize the word "time," and the continued variation on meter reflects the unpredictability of time: even though time is frequently viewed as a steady, stable, predictable thing, Auden mixes up the metric pattern to show that time is fickle and changing and undependable. The rhyme structure of the villanelle consists of only two different rhymes: in this poem, they are the "o" and "a" sounds.
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