If I Could Tell You

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1940

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Impossible Search for Meaning

The poem’s speaker returns repeatedly to the thematic dilemma that it is seemingly impossible to discern or construct meaning from the human experience. The poem immediately states that the passage of Time will reveal nothing in and of itself, as “Time will say nothing but I told you so” (Line 1). Time’s response of “I told you so” represents both a sense of inevitability and a lack of differentiation of outcome between experiences, be they good or bad. Instead, the speaker claims, “Time only knows the price we have to pay” (Line 2), suggesting that the only knowledge humans gain over time is what “price,” or outcome, they face through the actions and events of their lives. Because Time’s only response is “I told you so” regardless of what happens to a person, the speaker implies that humans will never discover an inherent, underlying meaning that gives a sense of purpose to what they do or to what happens to them, condemning humans to a life of general ignorance and helplessness.

The impossibility of discerning meaning also extends to the natural world around all living creatures. In the poem’s fourth stanza, the speaker wonders if there is a hidden meaning or purpose behind the cycles of the natural world and the phenomena that exist within it. The speaker speculates that an overarching order or purpose “must” exist, reflecting, “There must be reasons why the leaves decay” (Line 11, emphasis added), with the phrase “reasons why” indicating intentionality and a greater, overarching meaning behind nature’s laws. However, in spite of the speaker’s desire to know the potential “reasons” behind the cycles of birth and “decay” (Line 11) that exist in nature, it is still impossible to discern what these “reasons” are, as Time will still “say nothing but I told you so” (Line 12) in the face of such mysteries. In this way, the speaker suggests that humans are doomed to ignorance regarding the world at large as well as in the realm of their own individualized experiences. Even if meaning does exist in some form, it will remain forever elusive.

The Relentless March of Time

The inevitable passage of time is one of the dominant themes of the poem, further reinforcing the sense of pathos surrounding the human experience. The notion of transience appears more than once in the poem, gesturing to how everything changes and fades away sooner or later. The speaker uses natural imagery of “roses” that “grow” (Line 13) and “leaves [that] decay” (Line 11) to illustrate the cycles of blossoming and death that exist in the natural world year after year, which alludes to the fragility of all life forms more generally, including human life.

Time also appears in a personified form in one of the poem’s key refrains: “Time will say nothing but I told you so” (Lines 1, 6, 12, 18). In referring to time as “Time” as though it were a living element and in attributing to it a sense of indifference towards human suffering, the speaker further dramatizes the human condition, reinforcing the poem’s thematic preoccupation with humans falling prey to forces beyond their control. The speaker also claims that no amount of experience will succeed in making humans wiser or grant greater meaning to their lives, insisting, “Time only knows the price we have to pay” (Line 2)—in other words, humans will eventually learn what the outcome or “price” of an action or event is, but not necessarily why it happened in the first place. Because Time will never reveal an underlying sense of meaning to the human condition, and will only continue its relentless march onwards through the cycle of the seasons, the poem offers no future consolation.

The Fragility of Agency

The speaker touches upon the various ways in which living creatures attempt—or could theoretically attempt—to assert agency in their lives. The speaker’s allusion to fortune-telling in the third stanza (“There are no fortunes to be told” [Line 7]) gestures towards how humans try (and apparently fail) to discern what is to come in the future, implying that humans have an innate desire to assert some control in the face of the unknown. Although these attempts at control and knowledge are doomed to failure, as “Time will say nothing but I told you so” (Line 1) and humans will be left none the wiser, the reference to fortune-telling suggests that humans are not passive by nature. Instead, humans continue to seek ways of knowing and foreseeing, even if their efforts are in vain.

The speaker also actively speculates about the potential for agency in the world at large, as when they wonder if “Perhaps the roses really want to grow” (Line 13, emphasis added) in the fifth stanza, suggesting that living creatures might long to act upon their own desires instead of passively following the cycles and laws that surround them. Hints of potential defiance appear elsewhere in the poem, as when the speaker describes the possibility of spectators “weep[ing] when clowns put on their show” (Line 4) and “stumb[ling] when musicians play” (Line 5)—acts that could be interpreted as deliberate noncooperation or resistance to doing what is expected in a given situation.

This idea of potential defiance could also apply to the poem’s final stanza, in which the speaker wonders what would happen if “all the lions get up and go, / And all the brooks and soldiers run away” (Lines 16-17). Both lines contain examples of living creatures refusing to comply with what is expected of them, with the “lions” (Line 16) deserting the implied circus or zoo and the “brooks” and “soldiers” both “run[ning] away” (Line 17) from the greater powers—such as nature and war—that try to control their actions. The fact that the speaker concludes the poem by restating their own ignorance with the refrain, “If I could tell you I would let you know” (Line 19), leaves the potential for agency and defiance unresolved, with the speaker’s continued uncertainty and lack of knowledge implying that all resistance might be futile after all.