Summary:
In W. H. Auden's poem "If I Could Tell You," time is personified and introduced to the reader as an unreliable character, through through various poetical devices such as personification, repetition, and juxtaposed imagery. The speaker in the poem blames Time (with a capital "T") for unwanted changes in life, and he repeats the line because he observes that all changes, even those that are unintentional, come with Time.
In If I Could Tell You, a villanelle poem, by W. H. Auden, time is introduced to the reader as an unreliable person. This characteristic of Time given by the speaker is embroidered in the poem through various poetical devices such as personification, repetition and juxtaposed imagery. It can be inferred from the third tercet that the speaker apostrophes to his lover. The poetical devices in this poem serve to intensify the conflict between the speaker's desire to inform his lover of the future and the unexpected nature of Time.
The personification of time is the major element in this poem to deliver the reader that time is unreliable. In each line the word time is capitalized; this converts the concept of time into Time as a person with a special name. "Time will say nothing.....
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