Now, let's not start a "best" contest. It's one of his damned good ones, no argument. However, some might say it was a little inaccesible to unschooled ears: "Such boastings as the Gentiles use/Or lesser breeds without the Law," and so on, when he's NOT talking about being Jewish.

Myself, my favorite Kipling to SING is the section from "Song of the Dead": "We have fed our sea for a thousand years/And she calls us, still unfed." Fits pretty damned well into "Haul Away, Joe", and gets good sing-along for the incremental "If blood be the price of admiralty" line.

My favorite to LISTEN to? Of all things, "The First Chantey", as performed by Leslie Fish. I'd always dismissed it as neo-prehistory with a little too much (metaphorical) bashing one's cave-wife over the head with a rock, but Fish conveys the SENSE of it, and with a most haunting tune.

Of course, Michael Longcor's version of "The Irish Guards, 1915" ain't half bad either... including his hilarious introduction: "In World War I, the Irish suddenly found themselves in the unusual position of being on the SAME SIDE as the English!"