“If I Could Tell You” follows the form of a lyric known as a villanelle. It contains 19 lines divided up into six stanzas. The first five stanzas contain three lines each, known as a tercet, while the sixth and final stanza contains four lines, known as a quatrain. The poem features two key refrains, “Time will say nothing but I told you so” (Lines 1, 6, 12, 18) and “If I could tell you I would let you know” (Lines 3, 9, 15, 19)—these refrains are also a key feature of the villanelle form. The poem contains only two rhyme sounds, and its rhyme scheme is ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA. The refrains and the limited rhyme scheme create a tightly-constructed poem, enabling the poet to foreground the poem’s key themes and images through repetition.

The poem’s speaker personifies time as “Time” throughout the poem. Personification is used to attribute human qualities to abstract or nonhuman elements, such as nature, love, or, in the case of “If I Could Tell You,” time itself.