Desiderata

Does anybody remember the old poem "Desiderata"? I remember that this was mentioned during my high school days, I cant remember which year. Anyway, the poem's popularity at that time was brought about by the spoken-word recording of the said poem.

To refresh your memory and to understand its brief history, I have checked the ever reliable Wikipedia for the information. Here below is the brief history of this poem according to Wikipedia:
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"Desiderata" (Latin for "desired things", plural of desideratum) is an inspirational prose poem about attaining happiness in life. It was first copyrighted in 1927 by Max Ehrmann.

In the 1960s, it was widely circulated without attribution to Ehrmann, sometimes with the claim that it was found in Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore, Maryland, and that it had been written in 1692 (the year of the founding of Saint Paul's). Nevertheless, the estate of Ehrmann has kept various editions of the work in print. A spoken-word recording of the essay was made by Les Crane and reached #8 on the Billboard magazine charts in late 1971.

At least one court case has held the poem to be forfeited to the public domain because of distribution during and before World War II, but other cases have ruled that the assignee, through Ehrmann's heirs holds the purchased copyright.
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So there you are, the history of Deiderata.
If you read through the lines, its essay about how to live life to the fullest,how to handle relationships with other people, still holds true up to this day. All of us are in a never ending pursuit of happiness.

Included in this post is the full text of the poem, just click the picture itself and you will get a much larger view. If you want a copy of the sound file for the spoken-word recording by Les Crane, you can always drop me an email at jaypeelo@cox.net

I hope you can learn much out of this poem.