Advice to Live By

The poem, Advice to My Son is about a father, most likely the author, telling his son advice for successful, yet fun life. Basically, he tells his son to balance out his life with the good and not so good; have fun but don’t get too caught up in it. For that same matter, don’t play so far right that you go off the field. The key to life isn’t taking the moderate approach: going down the middle the entire road, it’s a balancing act where you take one side, but then even it out with the other, though when you do take a side, go all the way.
The actually speech of the father occurs at a time when the son is moving off to college, military… and this is the father’s good bye. The son moving off permanently, so he must receive some good advice to hold him over a long time. Thus the son is over 18, both because he is moving off and because what the father talks about: war, marriage, and farming. These are matters which men deal about, so the son must be old enough to st...