Poems (Sharpless)/The Pyxie of the Pine Barrens

4648377Poems — The Pyxie of the Pine BarrensFrances M. Sharpless
THE PYXIE OF THE PINE BARRENS
What did I say but now?
That earth was sad, life full of sordid cares?
While ever darker loomed the lonely years,
Did I say this but now?

A spicy pine breath fills my little room,
Rich in suggestions of awakening life;
These starry blossoms with their wild perfume
  Recall a sweet, almost forgotten, dream:
  A merry child I seem,
Unknowing of the city's noise and strife,
Hunting the Pyxie by the dark brown stream.

'Tis she, this perfect thing,
This elf of briny lands, and resinous woods,
Who brings this vision of her solitudes
Where dawns the early spring.

Where is no greed of gold, no bitter sob
Of anguish, on that pure and pungent air,
Where life's full pulses to joy's rhythm throb,
  Where no fierce passions, with discordant jar,
  The harmony can mar,—
A world as alien from our struggling care
As tho' it breathed upon some sinless star.