gloomywtregret
Raven
Joined: 8 Mar 2006
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 118
Location: Wherever I don't want to be
12 Mar 2006, 6:52 pm
ancientofdaze
Raven
Joined: 9 Dec 2005
Age: 91
Gender: Male
Posts: 103
Location: west wales, uk, overlooking the ocean
12 Mar 2006, 7:59 pm
I'm sorry to sound like a grouch, but I really don't like the "Desiderata." The sentiments are ok,
it's the sentimental, saccharine way they're strung together that makes my stomach turn.
And no, it wasn't written in some romantic distant century, but by Max Ehrmann, of Terre Haute, Indiana,
who copyrighted it in 1924, renewed in 1952.
Give me Walt Whitman any day:
And when dark depression threatened to overwhelm me, I got comfort from knowing that
Gerard Manley Hopkins had suffered the same, and survived:
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
_______________________________
the unexamined life is not worth living
13 Mar 2006, 7:31 pm
My doctor gave me a copy of that poem when I was released from the hospital. I loved it. 
