One of Pablo Neruda’s iconic love poems ‘Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines’, appeared in Neruda’s collection, “Twenty love poems and a song of Despair”. It was first published in 1924 when Neruda was nineteenth. One of the most striking aspects of the poem is its “Universality”. It’s a master piece of modern poetry. In the poem, Neruda expresses his current state of mind and the emotions. He writes about the “beauty of love”, and how it gets the power to bring peace and happiness to his soul. The poem explores, “lost love, grief, and power of art”.
Neruda’s poem ‘Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines’ ’ consists of thirty one lines. The poem is a free verse. It has no a proper rhyme scheme and follows a “peculiar form” of poetry.
In the first seven lines, the poet expresses that he can write the saddest lines “Tonight”. He also says the night is “starry”, and all the stars are “blue and palpitating” in the distance. He elicits to “wind” that, “the night wind revolves in the sky and sings”. In the mighty night, he expresses the love for his beloved, and sometimes his beloved loves him. Neruda retains his lover’s hand in his hand and he romantically says, “I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky”, and the “never-ending sky.”
At the beginning of eighth to end of the thirteenth line, the poet says that his beloved loves him and sometimes “he loves her too”. Here, the poet expresses that it was not to “love her great still eyes”. In this regard, it is shown the “trenchant circumstances” of poet’s mind. Rapidly, the poet repeats again, “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” and he can’t think she is not his girlfriend. The endless night seems even more vast now that his beloved is gone. In this context, the poetry falls onto his soul like “grassy field.”
The fourteenth line expresses the matter that the poet's love could not keep her. In addition, “the night is starry” and she is not with him. The poet is hearing the song that is far away from him. Here, he states that his soul is not satisfied because he has lost his “beloved”. The poet says with sadness, “my heart looks for her, and she is not with me”.
Neruda expresses that he can not certainly love her for a long time and his words are trying to touch her mind. The poet’s beloved will become another’s kinswoman before his kissing, and he is “enunciating”. Twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh lines merely express his “love”, which doesn’t certainly exist for all time. The poet again loves her because “Love is so short, forgetting is so long”. From these two lines, it shows that the poet is taking step back from the love.
In this starry night, the poet expresses, “I held her in my arms” and the night also likes the holding. The poet is “not satisfied”, because he losses his precious beloved. Ultimately, the poet wants to express , “though this be the last pain” and he will not wait for her. He pens, “these the last verses that I write for her” and laments that his beloved more suffers him.
To conclude, Neruda’s poem ‘Tonight I can write the saddest lines’ is a powerful and horrowing expression of the pain of “lost love”. It provides a sense of “closure and acceptance.” Neruda uses “vivid imagery”, “metaphorical languages”, and “concrete” to convey the depth of his sadness and the pain of failure love. In the poem, the poet in continually juxtaposes the images of the passion that he feels for the kinswoman. American poet Langston Hughes comments, “Neruda captures the heartache of lost love with such raw emotion in 'Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines”. And its evocative imagery and universal theme make it an enduring beauty.