GREAT BRITAIN: The King and the Sea

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Second Recessional? Cousins are Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Poet Rudyard Kipling, at whose home the statesman first met his invaluable, bouncing Wife Lucy. Last week sturdy Squire Baldwin, whose hobby is breeding prize pigs, was the only prominent member of His Majesty's Government who did not take time out to attend the Spithead sea pageant. Cousin Kipling, on the other hand, had been so fired by the prospect of this Silver Jubilee Naval Review that he had been grinding away for weeks in an effort to repeat the success of his Recessional, written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Last week 69-year-old Mr. Kipling released his poem free of copyright to anyone who would print it in full.* Silent was England's Poet Laureate, shy John Masefield. In Manhattan bold Spoon River Anthologist Edgar Lee Masters commented with a shrug: "The King and the Sea is nothing but verse—almost prose in fact. It can't be compared with Recessional. That is a cannibal hymn and I've always despised the damned thing, but it has a kind of swing to it—a lyrical dignity. This hasn't even that."

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