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
John McCrae born in Guelph, Ontario, Canadian poet, soldier, and physician John McCrae earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Toronto, where he received the Gold Medal. McCrae’s well-known poem “In Flanders Fields” memorializes the April 1915 battle in Belgium’s Ypres salient. For 17 days, McCrae tended those injured in the battle. January 28, 1918, at the age of 45. McCrae was buried with full military honors in Wimereux Cemetery near Boulogne, France. His family home in Guelph is preserved as a museum, and the main street in Wimereux is now named Rue McCrae.