Judd Lewis (1867-1945) worked for forty-five years at the Houston Post newspaper. He wrote a column of humor and poetry under the name, “Uncle Judd.” He was a man of great compassion who helped find a proper home for two hundred twenty-one homeless children. No doubt, each of them had issues of forgiveness to work through, so it is not surprising that one of Lewis’s most memorable pieces involved the fine art of forgetting wrongs suffered. His poem is titled “Forget It”
If you see a tall fellow ahead
of a crowd,
A leader of men, marching fearless and proud,
And you know
of a tale whose mere telling aloud
Would cause his proud head in anguish
be bowed,
It’s a pretty good plan to forget it.
If you know of a
skeleton hidden away
In a closet, and guarded, and kept from the day
In
the dark, whose showing, whose sudden display
Would cause grief and
sorrow and pain and dismay,
It’s a pretty good plan to forget it.
If you
know of a tale that will darken the joy
Of a man or woman, a girl or a
boy,
That will wipe out a smile or the least bit annoy
A fellow, or
cause any gladness to cloy,
It’s a pretty good plan to forget it!
Lewis was right, true love keeps no record of when it has been wronged.