Final answer:
Both Auden's 'Musée des Beaux Arts' and Williams's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' reference Pieter Brueghel's painting, focusing on the theme of human indifference and life's continuation despite individual suffering.
Step-by-step explanation:
The element that is included in both W.H. Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts and William Carlos Williams's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is the reference to Pieter Brueghel's painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. In these poems, both poets focus on the depiction of human indifference in the face of tragedy, as shown in Brueghel's work. The painting narrates the myth of Icarus, where the boy falls from the sky because his wax wings melt. Yet, the ploughman in the painting continues his work, undisturbed by the event. Similarly, the poets use the painting to comment on the human condition and the tendency of life to go on, even amidst catastrophic events.
Auden and Williams both allude to the theme of the insignificance of the individual's suffering in the grand scope of daily life and nature, which continues regardless of individual tragedies. They touch upon the concept that the world does not stop for one person's fall, a reflection on larger themes like humanity's apathy and the mundanity of life.