Our Advice To Others - A poem by Charles W. Noell

Our Advice To Others.

'Tis easy for us to give others advice,
To tell them the right way to live;
But harder, by far, to practice ourselves
The doctrine, my friend, that we give.
We can tell just exactly the things we would do
If standing we'd be where they stood;
But try us, and shorter by far will we fall
Than e'en we imagined we could.

We tell them no place should be found in their heart
For envy, nor hatred, nor strife;
Let love be the dominant feature of all
And control every action in life;
A good for an ill they should always return:
Two wrongs never made a right yet,
And if they've been wronged, this advice will we
"To always forgive and forget."

But if by perchance should our neighbor's best stock
Across in our fields go astray,
We lay that grudge up on the uppermost shelf,
And strive to get even some day.
We thus lose a friend, while we gain us a foe
For this we have not a regret,
Because we won't take the advice that we give
And learn to forgive and forget.

^__Charles W. Noell.

Poets and Poetry of Kansas
Edited by Thomas W. Herringshaw
(Chicago: American Publishers' Association. 1894)
Page 139