American writer Max Ehrmann (1872–1945) wrote the prose poem "Desiderata" in 1927. The Reverend Frederick Kates, rector of Saint Paul's Church in Baltimore, Maryland, included Desiderata in a compilation of devotional materials for his congregation in 1956. The compilation included the church's foundation date: "Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore A.D. 1692". Consequently, the date of the text's authorship was (and still is) widely mistaken as 1692, the year of the church's foundation.
"Go placidly amid the noise and haste ... the universe is unfolding as it should."
