My Life's Musical Journey... A Prayer
After my mother died in 1982, I returned to England for her funeral. It was whilst going through her dressing table drawer that I found a piece of paper neatly folded up inside a handkerchief. On it were scrawled some words in very shaky handwriting, the entire piece entitled 'A Prayer'. I read it through, feeling a spiritual presence in the empty house... so I folded it up and put it in my pocket. My sister, a doctor in England, did not have any idea who wrote it. You can find a scan of it here.
Returning to Australia in 1982, I put this piece of paper away.
For years I had held the belief that this was an original piece of work by one of my Mother's friends or relatives. To my amazement, I conducted a spontaneous search in Google.com for the words 'dreaming on the margin of a quiet river' on October 15th 2003 and found that this inspirational piece was in fact purported to be written by a Mr. Max Ehrmann in the early 1900's. Well, even after death, thank you Mr. Ehrmann if in deed this work is credited to you. You have put to rest the mystique for me and provided me with ten years of creativity that I never knew existed within me.
Pardon me for using the titles that I have, but I sure the current copyright owner would not mind, whoever he or she might be. The words of the last verse are slightly different however and I think the above version is better that that which is circulating the internet. I intend to further pursue research on this.
