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.
John McCrae’s other poems:
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