Cover of Blue Horses

Blue Horses

by Mary Oliver

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Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Blue Horses:

“The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird, the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And on and on. It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.”
“My heart dresses in blackand dances.”
“It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.”
“Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.”
“LONELINESS I too have known loneliness. I too have known what it is to feel misunderstood, rejected, and suddenly not at all beautiful. Oh, mother earth, your comfort is great, your arms never withhold. It has saved my life to know this. Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning. Oh, motions of tenderness!”
“I would like people to remember of me, howinexhaustible was her mindfulness.”
“No Matter WhatNo matter what the world claims, its wisdom always growing, so it’s said, some things don’t alter with time: the first kiss is a good example, and the flighty sweetness of rhyme. No matter what the world preaches spring unfolds in its appointed time, the violets open and the roses, snow in its hour builds its shining curves,there’s the laughter of children at play, and the wholesome sweetness of rhyme. No matter what the world does, some things don’t alter with time. The first kiss, the first death.The sorrowful sweetness of rhyme.”
“Do Stones Feel?Do stones feel?Do they love their life?Or does their patience drown out everything else?When I walk on the beach I gather a fewwhite ones, dark ones, the multiple colors.Don’t worry, I say, I’ll bring you back, and I do.Is the tree as it rises delighted with its manybranches,each one like a poem?Are the clouds glad to unburden their bundles of rain?Most of the world says no, no, it’s not possible.I refuse to think to such a conclusion.Too terrible it would be, to be wrong.”
“Little Crazy Love Song” I don’t want eventual,I want soon.It’s 5 a.m. It’s noon.It’s dusk falling to dark.I listen to music.I eat up a few wild poemswhile time creeps alongas though it’s got all day.This is what I have.The dull hangover of waiting,the blush of my heart on the damp grass,the flower-faced moon.A gull broods on the shorewhere a moment ago there were two.Softly my right hand fondles my left handas though it were you.”
“What's magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason.”
“I’ll just leave you with this. I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s enough to know that for some people, they exist, and that they dance.”
“The whole business of what’s reality and what isn’t has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don’t care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty.”
“When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. When it’s over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world”
“ANGELS You might see an angel anytime and anywhere. Of course you have to open your eyes to a kind of second level, but it’s not really hard. The whole business of what’s reality and what isn’t has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don’t care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty. For myself, but not for other people. That’s a place you just can’t get into, not entirely anyway, other people’s heads. I’ll just leave you with this. I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s enough to know that for some people they exist, and that they dance.”
“I don’t want to be demure or respectable.I was that way, asleep, for years.That way, you forget too many important things.How the little stones, even if you can’t hear them,are singing.How the river can’t wait to get to the ocean andthe sky, it’s been there before.What traveling is that!It is a joy to imagine such distances.I could skip sleep for the next hundred years.There is a fire in the lashes of my eyes.It doesn’t matter where I am, it could be a small room.The glimmer of gold Böhme saw on the kitchen potwas missed by everyone else in the house.Maybe the fire in my lashes is a reflection of that.Who do I have so many thoughts, they are driving mecrazy.Why am I always going anywhere, instead ofsomewhere?Listen to me or not, it hardly matters.I’m not trying to be wise, that would be foolish.I’m just chattering.”
“What kind of life is it always to plan and do, to promise and finish, to wish for the near and the safe? Yes, by the heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want a boat I couldn't steer.”
“FIRST YOGA LESSON “Be a lotus in the pond,” she said, “opening slowly, no single energy tugging against another but peacefully, all together.” I couldn’t even touch my toes. “Feel your quadriceps stretching?” she asked. Well, something was certainly stretching. Standing impressively upright, she raised one leg and placed it against the other, then lifted her arms and shook her hands like leaves. “Be a tree,” she said. I lay on the floor, exhausted. But to be a lotus in the pond opening slowly, and very slowly rising— that I could do.”
“Owl PoemOne has to say this for the rounds of lifethat keep coming and going; it has worked so far.The rabbit, after all, has never asked if the grasswanted to live.Any more than the owl consults with the rabbit.Acceptance of the world requiresthat I bow even to you,Master of the night.”
“I wokeAnd creptLike a catOn silent feetAbout my own house-To lookAt you While you were sleeping,Your hairSprayed on the pillow,Your eyesClosed,Your bodySafe and solitary,And my doorsShut for your safetyAnd your comfort.I did thisThinking I was intrudingYet wanting to seeThe most beautiful thingThat has ever been in my house.”
“SUCH SILENCE As deep as I ever went into the forest I came upon an old stone bench, very, very old, and around it a clearing, and beyond that trees taller and older than I had ever seen. Such silence! It really wasn’t so far from a town, but it seemed all the clocks in the world had stopped counting. So it was hard to suppose the usual rules applied. Sometimes there’s only a hint, a possibility. What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason. I hope everyone knows that. I sat on the bench, waiting for something. An angel, perhaps. Or dancers with the legs of goats. No, I didn’t see either. But only, I think, because I didn’t stay long enough.”
“This is what I have. The dull hangover of waiting, the blush of my heart on the damp grass,the flower-faced moon. A gull broods on the shore where a moment ago there were two. Softly my right hand fondles my left hand as though it were you.”
“Let the path become where I choose to walk, and not otherwise established.”
“ON MEDITATING, SORT OF Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished if you entertain a certain strict posture. Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree. So why should I think I could ever be successful? Some days I fall asleep, or land in that even better place—half-asleep—where the world, spring, summer, autumn, winter— flies through my mind in its hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent. So I just lie like that, while distance and time reveal their true attitudes: they never heard of me, and never will, or ever need to. Of course I wake up finally thinking, how wonderful to be who I am, made out of earth and water, my own thoughts, my own fingerprints— all that glorious, temporary stuff.”
“Why should I have been surprised?Hunters walk the forestwithout a sound.The hunter, strapped to his rifle,the fox on his feet of silk,the serpent on his empire of muscles—all move in a stillness,hungry, careful, intent.Just as the cancerentered the forest of my body,without a sound.”
“LonelinessI too have known loneliness. I too have known what it is to feel misunderstood, rejected, and suddenly not at all beautiful. Oh, mother earth, your comfort is great, your arms never withhold. It has saved my life to know this. Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning. Oh, motions of tenderness!”
“Admiring is easy, but affinity, that does take some time.”
“The question is, what will it be like after the last day? Will I float into the sky or will I fray within the earth or a river— remembering nothing? How desperate I would be if I couldn’t remember the sun rising, if I couldn’t remember trees, rivers; if I couldn’t even remember, beloved, your beloved name.”
“If I were a perfect person, I would be bowing continuously. I’m not, though I pause wherever I feel this holiness, which is why I’m often so late coming back from wherever I went.”
“LonelinessI too have known loneliness.I too have known what it is to feelmisunderstood,rejected, and suddenlynot at all beautiful.Oh, mother earth,your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.It has saved my life to know this.Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning.Oh, motions of tenderness!”
“I don’t want to be demure or respectable.I was that way, asleep, for years.That way, you forget too many important things.”

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