If I Could Tell You

“The Fall of Rome” by W. H. Auden (1947)

Auden’s lyric poem “The Fall of Rome” later appeared in his 1951 collection Nones. In this poem, Auden juxtaposes the emptiness and loneliness of Europe in the 1940s with allusions to the world of ancient Rome in the years of its decay, once again drawing upon natural imagery and a thematic preoccupation with time to create a sense of unsettling inevitability.

“Burnt Norton” by T. S. Eliot (1936)

“Burnt Norton” is the first poem of a cycle by T. S. Eliot later published as Four Quartets. It reveals the same preoccupations with time, nature, and the fragility of the human experience as “If I Could Tell You.”

“To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick (1648)

Robert Herrick’s graceful 17th-century lyric, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, is a famous work of the carpe diem (Latin for “seize the day”) trope in poetry. Like Auden, Herrick uses natural imagery to reflect upon the rapid passage of time and the cycles of decay to which all living things must submit. Unlike Auden, Herrick does offer some definitive advice to his reader: to go and make the most of youth and love before it is too late.