A Dead Poet's Myspace Page

I was remembering one of my literature classes I took at Florida Atlantic University and looking for one of the poets online. I couldn't remember his name for the life of me and then I found him: Gerard Manley Hopkins, an English poet and Jesuit priest. His poems were the highlight of that semester. Just an overwhelming love, a rhythm like no other, and alliteration out the wazoo! In fact, here's my favourite of his many poems: Pied Beauty.

Any way. I was looking him up when I found a myspace page for him. I shook my head in disbelief, that some twit had created a myspace page--a freakin' myspace page--for a dead poet. Well, apparently it's a pretty common thing. Because not only did I find Hopkins' myspace page, but ones for W.B. Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, William Blake, Percy Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, T.S. Elliot, Poe, and so on until I found one for George MacDonald, who is without a doubt one of my favourite writers and novelists of all time. So I had to check out his page.

I saw the comments and it hit me: these pages give people a chance to thank those--like MacDonald--who have helped them in so many ways through their writing. The comments were so moving and just incredibly amazing. Not only are those writers living on through their works, but they are living on through the comments and many displays of appreciation shown by others. To see how one person has touched so many lives, and for someone to create an outlet--like a myspace page--for that person to share their gratitude is one of the most amazing and awesome things I've witnessed in my entire life.

That's all, really. I just wanted to share that.


"He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him."