Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work represents only the most widely circulated part of a long, earnest, and sometimes overlooked literary life…
“Religion is the bread of the soul. The best Christianity of today has abandoned the metaphysics of the Bible, but clings to the ethical teachings of Jesus—love, brotherhood, and service—which are the hope of the world.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace
Edward Rowland Sill was born on 29 April 1841 in Windsor, Connecticut, and died on 27 February 1887 in Cleveland, Ohio. His life was short, frequently unsettled, and shadowed by poor health, yet it produced a body of poetry and prose distinguished by moral seriousness, intellectual candor, and an unusual tenderness toward ordinary human weakness. He belonged to the generation of American writers who came after the fi…
“Let a man write about himself. It's the only fellow he knows anything about.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality