Kipling's Poetry - 'with Kipling the culprit is "excessive lucidity."'

There is a well argued defense of the works of Kipling from Roger Kimball in the April 1, 2008 Slate in an article Rudyard Kipling Unburdened. While he is busy mounting a spirited challenge to the shallow charges against Kipling's work mounted by so many that have clearly not even read what he wrote, Kimball does not forgo the occasional stiletto knife-work; "Much modern poetry seems caught up in a sort of cosmic privateness". There are other gems: "Kipling was above all the laureate not of Empire, but of civilization, especially civilization under siege." Read the whole article.