Joe F wrote:
"Note particularly, in the thread linked to by BKLick's posting, the comments by me & others about Kipling. If not an honorary folkie, he was at any rate a more than honorary songwriter. Many of his poems (including many that did not invite the process by including "Song" or "Ballad" in the title) were set to music *repeatedly*; quite a few made it into the music halls, according to Orwell.
There seems to be no way of finding out whether he himself had any particular tunes in mind"

Actually, there's plenty of evidence that he did. Recessional was consciously set to a well-known hymn tune, for example. Lowestoft Boat and Harwich Ladies are plainly set to the tunes of A-Rovin' and Spanish Ladies respectively. PB was convinced Who Shall Judge The Lord was deliberately crafted to fit The Leaves Of Life. And so on... It's often quite hard to read a Kipling poem without a tune forming in your mind.

As for Robert Graves, mentioned earlier, US musician Jay Ansill has released a CD of Graves settings, A Lost World. Check out his website www.jayansill.com where you'll also hearo his setting of Graves' Under The Olives, not on the CD.

The late victorian poet AC Swinburne was a devotee of traditional ballads and wrote many pastiches of the form. Johnny Dickinson recorded a CD's worth of these a few years back.