Desiderata

1976 edition of The Desiderata of Happiness poetry

collection
"Desiderata" (Latin: "things desired") is an
early 1920s prose poem by the American
writer Max Ehrmann. Although he
copyrighted it in 1927, he distributed
copies of it without a required copyright
notice during 1933 and c. 1942, thereby
forfeiting his US copyright.[1] Largely
unknown in the author's lifetime, its use in
devotional and spoken word recordings in
1960 and 1971 called it to the attention of
the world.[2]

History
Max Ehrmann of
Desiderata
Terre Haute,
Indiana, wrote the Go placidly amid the

work in the early noise and the haste,

and remember what
1920s, starting in
peace there may be in
1921, but he did
silence. As far as
not use any title.
possible, with-out
He registered for surrender, be on good
his US copyright terms with all persons.
in 1927 via its Speak your truth quietly
first phrase. In and clearly; and listen
to others, even to the
1933 he
dull and the ignorant;
distributed the
they too have their
poem in the form
story. Avoid loud and
of a Christmas aggressive persons;
card,[1] evidently they are vexatious to
entitling it the spirit. If you
"Desiderata" compare yourself with
because a few others, you may

days later he become vain or bitter,

for always there will be
wrote in his
greater and lesser
Journal that a
persons than yourself.
Kansas editor
Enjoy your
criticized his achievements as well
"Desiderata".[4] as your plans. Keep
Several years interested in your own
before 1942 a career, however
humble; it is a real
depressed
possession in the
woman gave
changing fortunes of
psychiatrist
time. Exercise caution
Merrill Moore a in your business
copy of the poem affairs, for the world is
without the name full of trick-ery. But let
of the author, this not blind you to
allowing him to what virtue there is;

hand out over many persons strive for

high ideals, and
1,000
everywhere life is full of
unattributed
heroism. Be yourself.
copies to his
Especially do not feign
patients and affection. Neither be
soldiers during cynical  about love; for
World War II.[1] in  the face of all aridity
After Ehrmann and disenchantment it
is as perennial as the
died in 1945, his
grass. Take kindly the
widow first
counsel of the years,
published the
gracefully surrendering
work in 1948 in the things of youth.
The Poems of Nurture strength of
Max Ehrmann. spirit to shield you in
The Reverend sudden misfortune. But
Frederick Kates do not distress yourself

handed out about with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of
200 unattributed
fatigue and loneliness.
copies to his
Beyond a wholesome
congregation at
discipline, be gentle
Old Saint Paul's with yourself. You are a
Church, child of the universe no
Baltimore, during less than the trees and
1959 or 1960.[1][5] the stars; you have a
right to be here. And
The 1948 version whether or not it is
was in the form clear to you, no doubt

of one long prose the universe is

unfolding as it should.
paragraph, so
Therefore be at peace
earlier and later
with God, whatever you
versions were conceive Him to be.
presumably also And whatever your

in that form. Long labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion
after the author's
of life, keep peace in
death in 1945,
your soul. With all its
hence not
sham, drudgery and
authorized by broken dreams, it is still
him, the work a beautiful world. Be
was partitioned cheerful. Strive to be
into happy.[3]

subparagraphs or Max Ehrmann, 1948

stanzas. It was
first partitioned
into a few subparagraphs separated by
"distinctive spacing figures" in 1970 by Pro
Arts and Crescendo Publishers.[6] Later It
was split into four or more subparagraphs
separated by new lines in DePauw
University's Mirage for 1978,[7] and in the
July/August 1999 issue of the Saturday
Evening Post.[8] In some versions, almost
all instances of "and" are replaced by
ampersands, "&".[9] Other versions change
"the noise and the haste" to "the noise and
haste" and change "Be cheerful." to "Be
careful.", notably the 1971 spoken word
recording by Les Crane.[10]

Copyright status
On January 3, 1927, Ehrmann registered
"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
etc." under US copyright number A
962402.[11][12] In 1948, three years after
Ehrmann's death, Bertha K. Ehrmann, his
widow, included "Desiderata" in The Poems
of Max Ehrmann, published that year by the
Bruce Humphries Publishing Company of
Boston.[3][13] In 1954, she renewed the
copyright.[14]

In 1959 or 1960, the Reverend Frederick

Kates, rector of Saint Paul's Church in
Baltimore, Maryland, included "Desiderata"
in a compilation of devotional materials
for his congregation. The compilation
included the church's foundation date, "Old
Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore AD 1692,"
which readers subsequently took, and
sometimes still do take, to be the date of
the poem's composition.[13][15]

In 1967, Robert L. Bell acquired the

publishing rights from Bruce Humphries
Publishing Company, where he was
president, and then bought the copyright
from Richard Wright, nephew and heir to
the Ehrmann works.[16]

In August 1971, the poem was published

in Success Unlimited magazine, without
permission from Robert L. Bell. In a 1975
lawsuit against the magazine's publisher,
Combined Registry Co., the court ruled
(and subsequently the 7th Circuit Court of
Appeals upheld) that copyright had been
abandoned and forfeited because the
poem had been authorized for publication
without a copyright notice in 1933 and
1942 – and that the poem was therefore in
the public domain.[1][17][18]

Uses in popular culture

This article appears to contain trivial, minor, or
unrelated references to popular culture.Learn more

There have been many uses of the poem in

the popular canon:

When US Democratic presidential

hopeful Adlai Stevenson died in 1965, a
guest in his home found the Desiderata
near his bedside and discovered that
Stevenson had planned to use it in his
Christmas cards. This contributed
further to the poem becoming widely
known.[13]
The text was widely distributed in poster
form in the 1960s and 1970s.[19]
Calling it "Spock Thoughts", Leonard
Nimoy recited the poem on his 1968
album, Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy.
This version also appeared on the 1995
re-release of Leonard Nimoy Presents
Mr. Spock's Music from Outer Space. His
rendition is not the only one to change
the second-to-last sentence from "Be
Cheerful" to "Be Careful".
In concluding her January 8, 1970,
interview with David Frost, actress Joan
Crawford recited Desiderata.[20]
In late 1971 and early 1972, Les Crane's
spoken-word recording of Desiderata
(the lead track on his 1971 Warner Bros.
album Desiderata)[2] peaked at #8 on the
Billboard chart, #4 on the Canadian RPM
Magazine chart, and #6 on the UK
Melody Maker's chart. It made #4 on the
Australian singles chart in 1971 and #1
in New Zealand in 1972.[21] The
producers of Crane's recording assumed
that the poem was too old to be in
copyright, but the publicity surrounding
the record led to clarification of
Ehrmann's authorship and his family
eventually receiving royalties.
Scottish folk-rock and soft rock duo
Gallagher and Lyle recorded their own
adaptation of the poem for their
eponymous debut album in 1972.
Noted German actor and presenter
Friedrich Schütter covered the piece in
his native tongue later in 1971 utilizing
the original Les Crane backing tracks
shipped in from the U.S.
A Spanish language version by Mexican
actor Arturo Benavides topped the
Mexican charts for six weeks in 1972.[22]
In 1972, National Lampoon did a parody
on this prose entitled Deteriorata, which
featured the lines: "You are a fluke of the
universe; you have no right to be here".
In response to his government's losing
its majority in the 1972 Canadian federal
election, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
quoted Desiderata by reassuring the
nation that "the universe is unfolding as
it should."[23] He also quoted the poem's
final stanza at the end of his concession
speech after losing the 1979 election to
Joe Clark.
In a 1980 episode of the British TV
series The Professionals entitled
"Discovered in a Graveyard", part of the
poem is recited by George Cowley
(Gordon Jackson).[24]
British group Opus III included the text in
the CD inlay of their 1992 album Mind
Fruit[25]
Israeli "Voice of Peace" radio-station
owner Abie Nathan would broadcast
himself reading it each evening, from a
pirate radio ship "somewhere in the
Mediterranean" [26]
The British band In the Nursery adapted
the poem to music on its 1992 album
Duality.[27]
On August 26, 2010, a bronze statue of
Ehrmann sitting on a park bench was
unveiled in Terre Haute, Indiana, his
hometown, with the sculpture done by
Bill Wolfe. On a nearby walkway, some
lines of the poem are also available to
be read by passers-by.[28]
Actor Morgan Freeman interviewed on
Oprah Winfrey's Master Class television
special (2012), expressed how deeply
the poem Desiderata shaped his life.[29]
Reggae band SOJA has a Grammy
nominated album titled Amid the Noise
and Haste in reference to this poem.
Lazyboy the band has a song
'Desiderata' which quotes this poem on
their album LazyBoy TV.[30]
In 2013 German country music singer
Carl Emroy re-created the Les Crane
version both in his native German, as
well as in English, in a set of music
videos filmed in St. Joseph, Michigan, at
a lakeside resort.
In 2016, in celebration of the 25th
anniversary of the Philippine drama
anthology series Maalaala Mo Kaya, a
 spoken-word music recording of the
poem (recorded in both English and
Filipino) was performed by TBUP Choir
and OPM singers Lea Salonga, Martin
Nievera, Gary Valenciano, Lani
Misalucha, Ogie Alcasid, Zsa Zsa Padilla
and Sharon Cuneta, with a spoken
narration of the poem by the program's
host Charo Santos-Concio, and included
on the compilation album Life Songs
with Charo Santos.[31]
The Netflix animated sitcom F is for
family, Season 3 EP 8 features a spoken
word section of Desiderata.[32]

References
1. Bell v. Combined Registry Co., 397 F.
Supp. 1241 , No. 72 C 1819 (Dist.
Court, ND Illinois 1975) ("...the court
finds that the author and copyright
proprietor, Max Ehrmann, both
abandoned and forfeited the copyright
in Desiderata.").
2. "Les Crane – Desiderata" .
discogs.com. Retrieved 23 February
2013.
Warner Bros. Records BS 2570
3. Ehrmann, Max (1948). Ehrmann,
Bertha (ed.). "The Poems of Max
Ehrmann" . Bruce Humphries, Inc.
p. 165. A photo-copy of the original
text is in www.desiderata.com
4. Ehrmann, Max (1952), The Journal of
Max Ehrmann , p. 309, "1934, January
4.—An editor in Kansas criticizes my
Desiderata ..."
5. Contrary to Bell v. Combined Registry
Company, Desiderata is not in
Between Dawn and Dusk by Rev.
Kates for 1957 through its eighth
printing.
6. Bell v. Pro Arts , 1973, ¶16
 7. "Desiderata" , Mirage, DePauw
University, 93, p. 43, 1978
8. "Desiderata" , Saturday Evening Post,
p. 48, 1999
9. [Max Ehrmann] (1972), Desiderata,
New York: Crown Publishers, ISBN 0-
517-53422-3
10. Douglas, Jonathan; Rasted, Soren,
Desiderata lyrics
11.  This article incorporates public
domain material from the United
States Government document
"Catalog of Copyright Entries (1927)
New Series Vol 24 Part 1, citation
number 1041 " by Library of Congress
Copyright Office.
12. "File:Desiderata 1927 Copyright
record.jpg" . wikimedia.org. Retrieved
1 July 2015.
13. Cavinder, Fred D. (August 1973).
"Desiderata". TWA Ambassador.
pp. 14–15. via Platt, Suzy, ed. (1993).
Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of
Quotations . Library of Congress.
Barnes & Noble. p. 212.
ISBN 9780880297684. Retrieved
2011-11-10.
14.  This article incorporates public
domain material from the United
States Government document "[1] ,
Copyright Renewal Database Long
Record R127188" by Stanford
University Copyright Renewal
Database. Retrieved on 18 August
2013.
15. "Desiderata History" . fleurdelis.com.
Retrieved 1 July 2015.
16. "Desiderata History" . desiderata.com.
Retrieved 1 July 2015.
17. Bell v. Combined Registry Co., 536 F.
2d 164 , No. 75-1753 (Court of
Appeals, 7th Circuit 1976) ("The
judgment appealed from is
AFFIRMED.").
18. "Bell v. Combined Registry Co., 536
F.2d 164 (7th Cir., 1976)" . United
States Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit. May 14, 1976.
19. Katz, Barbara J. (November 27, 1977).
"Popular Prose-Poem is No Work of
the Ages" . Washington Post.
Retrieved 7 September 2016.
20. " "The David Frost Show" Episode
#2.100 (TV Episode 1970)" . IMDb.
Retrieved 1 July 2015.
21. Flavour of New Zealand, 6 March
1972
22. "Hits of the world" . Billboard. 25
March 1972. p. 54.
23. Valpy, Michael (June 25, 2004). " 'The
universe is unfolding as it should' " .
The Globe and Mail. Retrieved
7 September 2016.
24. " 'The Professionals' TV Series -
Episode 'Discovered in a Graveyard' " .
Mark-1.co.uk. Retrieved 7 December
2018.
25. "Androgyny's Adventures Of The
Shaved Sasquatch" .
Adventuresoftheshavedsasquatch.blo
gspot.com. Retrieved 7 December
2018.
26. "Abie Nathan reading "Desiderata" -
"The voice of peace" 100FM" .
YouTube. Retrieved 7 December 2018.
27. "Duality" . Discogs.com.
28. Boyce, Brian (August 27, 2010). "Max
takes his seat at the Crossroads of
America" . Tribune-Star. Terre Haute,
Indiana. Retrieved 2012-12-31.
29. "Morgan's Poem on Master Class -
Zavvi Rodaine" . zavvirodaine.com.
Retrieved 1 July 2015.
30. AllMusic Review by Johnny Loftus
(2006-09-04). "Lazyboy TV - Lazy-B,
Lazyboy | Songs, Reviews, Credits" .
AllMusic. Retrieved 2016-10-03.
31. "Desiderata - Ms. Charo Santos
featuring OPM Icons" . ABS-CBN
Starmusic. ABS-CBN Corporation. July
23, 2016. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
 32. "F is For Family (2015) s03e08
Episode Script | SS" . Springfield!
Springfield!. Retrieved 2019-04-26.

External links
Works related to Desiderata at
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