Unsolved

John McCrae 1872 (Guelph) – 1918 (Boulogne-sur-Mer)



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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

34 sec read
89

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCBDEDEFGFGHH
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 597
Words 115
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14

John McCrae

Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae, MD was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I, and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium. more…

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    "Unsolved" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/23787/unsolved>.

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