[shezza]

Senator Kerry's private schools no doubt found Kipling too middle-class, and had him memorizing Shelley or something

Or T.S. Eliot. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock springs to mind.

[Miss Marple]

Oh, you are quite right!! I don't know why I didn't think of it! Excellent choice for the Kerry curriculum!

[Tom D.]

Don't be too hard on Eliot. The Wasteland is nothing to sneeze at. As I recall (but my memory is a little fuzzy) Eliot had some right wing ideas.

[Rocky]

Excellent choice:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
(it can be found at: http://www.cs.amherst.edu/~ccm/prufrock.html)

Some choice excerpts:

"And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,"

"But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. "

"Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool."