À quoi bon dire

Cards (6)

  • The title translates approximately to "what's the point in saying"
  • The poem uses polysyndenton (repeated conjunctions) for emphasis
  • The short lines but I and but you arrest the rhyme and place significance on you and I outside of everything else
  • The ambiguous language used suggests the universal nature of love and how it cycles onwards through time
  • A key theme of the poem is eternity versus ephemerality in the context of relationships
  • The poem was written around the time of world war one