John McCrae

Unsolved

Amid my books I lived the hurrying years,
    Disdaining kinship with my fellow man;
Alike to me were human smiles and tears,
    I cared not whither Earth's great life-stream ran,
Till as I knelt before my mouldered shrine,
    God made me look into a woman's eyes;
And I, who thought all earthly wisdom mine,
    Knew in a moment that the eternal skies
Were measured but in inches, to the quest
    That lay before me in that mystic gaze.
"Surely I have been errant: it is best
    That I should tread, with men their human ways."
God took the teacher, ere the task was learned,
And to my lonely books again I turned.