À quoi bon dire

• 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
• A quoi bon dire was first published in 1916