Serenade

Dear love, you are a snow-girt swan who glides Along the pearly traces of a lake For in your breast, unearthly grace resides: A power, like morn’s bud, wide and awake. You are a nymph who rests within the ebb Of some cool stream, whose smile traces stars. Dear love, within your beauty’s twining web, I have been tangled. Your bright crest unbars With fairest summer weather and spring nights, And autumn afternoons, stowed with the dreams, Of golden evenings, and of winter sprites Which wend around the forests, wrapped in beams. Dear love, your heart’s as soft as flakes of snow That dot the mountains and the moors. Fresh dew Which drips across the flower’s golden brow Is all the gentleness that makes you, you. Have we ne’er met before, maid of the lea, Where gleaming, murm’rous brooks all gently moan, What would have isolation left of me? If not for you, I would have died alone. © 2014 Gleb Zavlanov