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Best Poems Written by Gleb Zavlanov

Below are the all-time best Gleb Zavlanov poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Ode To Morning

Ode to Morning

Yon morning, spellbound mistress of the skies
    How gently all your feathers move apart
How lightly thrill your soft, eternal sighs
    And feed with hope and mirth my swollen heart
    How softly sway your tresses of pure gold
        And glut with wealth the barren, night-sprent glade
            And plump the crisp, brown hazel shells with beams
        And cast a light strewn with a cooling shade
            Athwart the gentle ebbs of oozing streams
    Once quiet, still unravished yet. How bold

Your bubbling swells all cast their glinting charms
    Across the earth’s soft cheek and softer breast
Yon morning, wrap the world within your arms
    And light each mead with gloried noonday zest
    And twine with passioned rays the Heaven’s steep
        And cups of all the gem-encrusted buds
            And feed the bowers with a web of light
        And all the clouds with Lord Apollo’s rods
            Of nascent shine to veer away the night
    And all the evil spells of its black sleep

Return to us, gold morn with aching pride,
    And wake the spirits of the sleeping clouds,
And stir the bees which in the foxgloves hide,
    And let the bashful roses pry their shrouds
    To feel upon their breasts the cooling breeze
         Unfold from out the mountain’s stony rim
             The rainbows, looming arches, sundry hued
         Gold morn, when midnight’s sleepy glow shall dim
             And leas no more shall be by stars bedewed
    Then glow, until the lark sings with full ease!

© 2014 Gleb Zavlanov

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Ode To a Bee

Swift bee, the gilded messenger of bliss,
    Begirt with golden stars of Heaven’s span,
What draws you to the clover’s gentle kiss?
    Sweet nectars, that the strongest drinker can
    Carouse with dreams and dizzy waves of sleep,
        Or mocks the freshest breath of summer’s clime?
            Swift bee, a flame-plumed star of black and gold,
    Why do you with your mouth, completely reap
            The liquors that each golden bud does hold,
        And lulls with somnolence the might of time?
 
Oh, bee, you spread the tufted pollen clouds
     Like nebulae of opal stars crossways
The delicate, soft digitalis crowds,
    Which passionately garner sunbeam rays
    Within their coral shells. I can’t express
        How much your toil’s worth to coming spring,
             And how so passioned glide your wings around
    The purple, gentle harebell’s loosened dress,
             And make, through pretty hums, spring’s hopeful sound
        Oft too profaned by your most fearsome sting!
 
Oh, pretty hummer! Hearty worker! Bee!
    I see you roaming round the garden’s bend,
Where sweet, white daisies wreathe a canopy,
    And make you but a hearty, cheerful friend.
    Swift bee, the aching, swollen heart of mine
        Desires comfort where pain knows no ruth
            The buds hold, like rich garners golden grain,
    Ambrosia of the gods, dream’s honeyed wine
            So bring and let dear bee, such moisture stain
        My lips and warm my heart with spring’s bright youth!
 

© 2014 Gleb Zavlanov

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Ode To Spring

Fair Spring, a lady, palely loitering,
    Whose brow is decked with flowers and with dew,
Whose bosom births youth’s essence which does bring
    Unto the barren glades, a glory, new,
    Where have you been for every heart had pinéd without you?
 
Where have you been, when winter with its shroud
    Had wrapped the world with thorns of frost and snow,
And when the strength of Cheimon’s hoary cloud
    Had swallowed worlds and bound from head to toe
    Each aging tree, and froze the rivers which once, swift, did flow?
 
Fair spring, I’ve grieved and skulked in mortal grief,
    And wept for endless days. I craved your breath
To make once lively every faded leaf,
    And save the sprightly buds from early death,
    And blossom effervescent flowers from the earth, beneath.
 
And birth sweet fruits, ripe with rich, temp’rate blood,
    And kiss the earth’s wan cheek and ever store
With ripeness every stalk and shoot and bud
    And with pure sweetness every apple’s core,
    And turn to foaming bubbles and bright verdure, winter’s hoar.
 
The spirits of the worms all beam with pride,
    And all the swift-heeled elk run round the leas,
And mid the blossoms, nightingales hide,
    And sing a tune that gently, long the breeze,
    Wafts through and through: an ode to you, your beauty, ne’er to cease.
 
Oh, spring, at last, I bear a mighty beam
    For seeing your first budded rays, which bring
Upon the glades, gold wealth and honeyed dream.
    At last, the winter fled upon his wing
    In fright of all your powers, for you came, at last, fair spring!

© 2014 Gleb Zavlanov

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Ambition, Love and Mortal Fate

Before me, as I slept one summer night
    Came, graced in gems of midnight’s pale beams
    Three maidens, wrought of finest faery dreams
For never had I witnessed such a sight
Of passioned beauty. Still of grace, in spite
    There loomed above their forms like ghastly steams,
    The product of all pessimism’s schemes:
The shade of melancholy’s ghastly sprite
    Upborn upon the sky! In wistful shroud,
        It stalked each footstep on the placid frown
            Of earth’s terrain, beneath their wistful gait
    Until at last, it drained (like drains a cloud
        The last of evening’s rays, which frightened, flown)
            These maids: Ambition, Love, and mortal Fate.

© 2014 Gleb Zavlanov

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Julius Caesar

Oh, Caesar, though our touch is lost in time:
Weeks, passing years, and years long eons, passed,
I still can hear and feel in learnéd rhyme
Your essence. Like some bee which has amassed
Sweets of the digitalis and the rose,
So have you much amassed in glory’s sack.
Yet just as power strengthens, so greed grows
And weighs much heavy burdens on the back!
Oh, Caesar, stricken soul who now weeps on
The fallen ashes of your flaming lands
Who roamed into the gold of Egypt’s sun
The spirit who travailed on its sands,
    It looks as if the boon of glory’s womb
    Had come to stow the image of your tomb

© 2014 Gleb Zavlanov

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The Black Crow

Three wholesome troubling years before, a thousand cursed days back
    I lay, most stiff within my bed, my house of death did reek
And all my nightmares, all my slumbers, they were deep and black
    But for the worst, came memory I’m frightened of to speak
    A memory, which left me in the bounds of fear’s chains, weak
 
I shall confess, I shall tell you, with my past I’m distraught
    For long ago before this dark and creeping, ghastly night
I hewn my wife’s thick neck with forty axe-cleaves, and I sought
    Help from the nameless bearer of the skulls of mortal plight
    And drank the blood of her tight veins, and even though I tried
 
To bid such sinful practicing, I couldn’t do it though
    And ever since I hid my blade, and buried her, her dead
I delved within the abyss of my rue and of my woe
    And nightmares kept on pounding through the chambers of my head
    And I had lived e’er in dark time, consumed half by such dread
 
As all the hateful winds, they moaned and rocked trees, disarrayed
    And scathed all in its path, the biting, thorn-like, silver snow
Most suddenly, my reddened eyes caught fast a passing shade
    And perchéd then upon the pane, a hideous black crow
    Who us, mere mortals, dread to see and dread to even know
 
“Get off, get out,” I yelled, but it stood still, as if of stone
    Just eying me, its beak a lustrous sword, each eye a well
And Dear Lord, then it uttered in a raspy, hissing tone
   Most low, “the eyes of Hell, the eyes of Hell, the eyes of Hell!”
   I staggered, then I tripped, and then upon the floor I fell
 
And thunder roared and the winds moanéd louder, louder still
    “No, no,” I gaspéd, and for sweet mercy, then I had prayed
But the crow, eying me, was readying for its first kill
    Foreboding’s wind had rustled silken curtains in a braid
    Whisp’ring to the heartbeats of my stricken heart, afraid
 
It spread its hellish wings and like a ghastly phantom flew
    And grabbed, and tore my eyes. I shrieked in utter agony
It shrieked, “They’re watching you, they’re watching you, they’re watching you.”
    I yelled back at it, “What do you want of a wretch as me?
    Ye crow, ye hell-winged messenger, what do you want of me?”
 
“Your eye, your eye, your eye, your eye” the crow away then flew
    And left me in a state so puzzled and so pained and worn
‘Ah, G-d, what caused such torment, is it my illusion’s strew
    Or is it just the binding powers of my thoughts, forlorn?”
    But ever since, one-eyed, I lived, and lived in vile scorn
 
    And once upon a winter morrow, came upon my door
        A letter which had read They’re watching you...forevermore…
            I saw then thousands of black crows all fly round in a score
                They’re watching you...they’re watching you...forevermore and more…

© 2014 Gleb Zavlanov

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Hypnos

Oh Hypnos lord of all the lands of dream,
    Whose slumb’rous breath weaves eyes with poppy leaf,
    And whose sweet lullabies mortals relieve
Of throes, and shields them from the evil scheme
    Of Phobetor who roams around the world at close of eve,
 
Oh Hypnos, phantom o’er each mossy cot,
    Whose gentle, dreamy hands all place to rest
    The cooing birds found snoozing in their nest
And all the goats upon the meads where not
    A pallid moonbeam can descry, for all’s by night suppressed,
 
Or mortal denizens in cities, pent
    Or gleaming fish found in the ocean’s deep,
    Or cattle, waiting in the glens for sleep
To dawn upon their minds, and their souls send
    Into Elysium until the morn shall night’s shoots reap,
 
And plant its gloried beams into the bare
    And fill the lands with nec’trous, honeyed rays,
    Come on us, god of sleep, unearthly grace
From out the shadows of your mystic lair,
    And spread across our waking minds your thick, morphean haze.
 
How much I’ve agonized and yearned to gain
    The lavender and eat such dozy bud,
    And try to fall asleep, and ever nod
As I get lost and stray in dream’s domain,
    But never have I had success for slumber I could not!
 
I roamed across the clouds of yester night
    And round the meadows of the yesteryear,
    But never can I my bright spirit steer
Into such sleep, and take upon my flight
    Into deep slumber’s den, until, Hypnos you did appear,
 
And eased my mind and soul, and with your spells
    Had quelled the raging passions of my heart,
    And carefully had closed the draws to part,
Once you had done your deed and slowed the swells
    Of my free spirit, and had my sore mind with slumbers barred…
     

© 2014 Gleb Zavlanov

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Summer and Love

When summer pierces earth and dying root,
And winds, the golden-honeyed flowers sweep,
And liquor rays bathe every bud and shoot,
Newly awakened from the depths of sleep,
When pollen springs forth in white, seasoned clouds,
Miasmic dreams, like visions, pure and sweet,
When gentle rainy mist the land enshrouds,
And tiptoes cross the meads on silent feet,
When sweet, ambrosial bloom shall sprout and bud,
And throw their dreamy breaths to weave a sigh
And cast their milky sap, and sport sweet blood,
And touch the Heavens that lurk in the sky,
    It’s time, when fresh and pure is all of love
    But still I worry, for the seasons move 

© 2014 Gleb Zavlanov

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Pygmalion's Plea

I fashioned my love’s frown of dull command
    And sneer of some embellished, soundless clay.
    From morning to the night, from night to day
I dwelt nearby my love, and couldn’t stand
To peel my eyes from off her cheek’s faint brand,
    Nor off her lips, embroidered with the ray
    Of gold and ruby, bright as stars of May
Yet cold as winter wrapping autumn land. 
    Oh, Venus, my poor heart and stricken soul
        Fell not for women of pure human touch
     For I have dipped myself in folly’s bowl
         But deem it folly I should not, for much
    I’ve loved, but Venus, ever in my dole
         I’ll live if stays to be of icy stone, this statue’s clutch

© 2014 Gleb Zavlanov

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Sweet Love, Your Cheek Is Pale

Sweet love, your cheek is pallid and your crest
Is laid with spleens of winter’s iron rage.
Your lip is faint, and your heart now does rest
Within the bowelled dungeons of sore age.
Your kiss, once but a touch of summer’s blood
Is now a stab of winter’s dreary gripe,
And your eyes now are with miasmas fraught.
Your soul presents no flower or fruit, ripe.
The visions of your dream have been expelled
By wanton winds that o’er the canyons sweep
And love that you within your gaze beheld
Has sunk within eternal, frosted sleep.
    That isn’t so: when summer’s ripening
    Sweet blossoms on your pallid face, then spring.

© 2013 Gleb Zavlanov