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.