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.