'Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness...'

Neruda | ‘A Frank, Sensuous Spokesman for Love’ ❤️

[For some Neruda nuggets on his birthday today] 😍

Pablo Neruda, also called the Whitman of the South, was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Interestingly, his teacher, Gabriela Mistral was also a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in the year 1945 – twenty-six years ahead of her prodigious student – Neruda.

It was Mistral who first recognized the prodigious Neruda’s immense potential and started encouraging him to work on his literary abilities by giving him good books to read on a regular basis.

Billed as a ‘frank, sensuous spokesman for love’, Neruda’s fame today rests on his odes and his poetry – a poetry that could connect quite instantly with the hearts of the lay and the lords alike!

Neruda always had a great passion for travelling, and reading!

On his birth anniversary today, me thought of giving y’all one intense poem from Neruda that I’ve loved so much!

It’s such an inspirational poem on the likes of Kipling’s ‘If’ and it’s titled “Die Slowly!”

Well, the poem emphasizes on the need for living a wholesome life, which would mean, living a fuller and an enriching life. 

To do that, one should take risks, and not be ensconced comfortably in one’s comfort zone, he says! 

Here’s giving y’all nuggets from this fab poem!

He who becomes the slave of habit,

who follows the same routes every day,

who never changes pace,

who does not risk and change the colour of his clothes,

who does not speak and does not experience,

dies slowly.

He who does not travel, who does not read,

who does not listen to music,

who does not find grace in himself,

she who does not find grace in herself,

dies slowly.

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,

who does not allow himself to be helped,

who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck,

about the rain that never stops,

dies slowly.

Let's try and avoid death in small doses,

reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.

Only a burning patience will lead

to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

- Pablo Neruda

Inspirational nuggets for all of our lives, ain’t it? 😍

Image: this blogger’s