The Desiderata
– “For You To Enjoy And Share With Friends” –
A narrated and sung version of the famous poem by Max Erhmann. The Desiderata (Latin: “desired things”) was largely unknown in the author’s lifetime, the text became widely known after its use in a devotional, after subsequently being found at Adlai Stevenson’s, an American politician, deathbed in 1965, and after spoken-word recordings in 1971 and 1972.
In August 1971 the poem was published in Success Unlimited magazine, without authorization from Ehrmann’s family. In a 1976 lawsuit against the magazine’s publisher, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that copyright had been forfeited because the poem had been authorized for publication without a copyright notice in the 1940s – and that the poem is therefore in the public domain.
