
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 19, 1995                   TAG: 9510190067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Short

POET OF EMPIRE CONQUERS BBC POLL

Henry James called Rudyard Kipling the ``infant monster.'' W.H. Auden said Kipling wrote poetry like a drill sergeant, never allowing the words to think for themselves.

Dylan Thomas denounced Kipling as standing ``for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.''

But the poet of Empire and ``the white man's burden'' has just been hailed as Britain's favorite poet.

Or, to be precise, the favorite of an unknown number of callers who thought it was worth 25 pence, about 40 cents, per call to join a phone-in poll set up by the BBC as part of Poetry Day last Friday.

Among 7,500 callers, who spread their votes over more than a thousand poems, Kipling's ``If'' was the most frequently mentioned work. He was also mentioned most often among 200-plus authors. ``If'' is an older man's advice to the young:

``If you can fill the unforgiving minute

``With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

``Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

``And - which is more - you'll be a man, my son!''

The BBC refused to say how many votes Kipling actually won, and wouldn't say why it wouldn't disclose the figures. ``We've said what we have decided to say,'' said Karen Jones of the BBC's education unit. But the BBC did say that ``If'' pulled twice as many votes as ``Lady of Shalott'' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

by CNB