In Flanders Fields and Other Poems/Unsolved

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Unsolved  (1895)  by John McCrae

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Canadian Magazine

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.