Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.

The Files

The Files—

Office Files!

Oblige me by referring to the Files.

Every question man can raise,

Every phrase of every phase

Of that question is on record in the Files—

(Threshed out threadbare—fought and finished in the Files).

Ere the Universe at large

Was our new-tipped arrows’ targe—

Ere we rediscovered Mammon and his wiles—

Faenza, gentle reader, spent her—five-and-twentieth leader—

(You will find him, and some others, in the Files).

Warn all coming Robert Brownings and Carlyles,

It will interest them to hunt among the Files,

Where unvisited, a-cold,

Lie the crowded years of old

In that Kensall-Green of greatness called the Files

(In our newspaPère-la-Chaise the Office Files),

Where the dead men lay them down

Meekly sure of long renown,

And above them, sere and swift,

Packs the daily deepening drift

Of the all-recording, all-effacing Files—

The obliterating, automatic Files.

Count the mighty men who slung

Ink, Evangel, Sword, or Tongue

When Reform and you were young—

Made their boasts and spake according in the Files—

(Hear the ghosts that wake applauding in the Files!)

Trace each all-forgot career

From long primer through brevier

Unto Death, a para minion in the Files

(Para minion—solid—bottom of the Files)….

Some successful Kings and Queens adorn the Files.

They were great, their views were leaded,

And their deaths were triple-headed,

So they catch the eye in running through the Files

(Show as blazes in the mazes of the Files);

For their “paramours and priests,”

And their gross, jack-booted feasts,

And their “epoch-marking actions” see the Files.

Was it Bomba fled the blue Sicilian isles?

Was it Saffi, a professor

Once of Oxford, brought redress or

Garibaldi? Who remembers

Forty-odd-year-old Septembers?—

Only sextons paid to dig among the Files

(Such as I am, born and bred among the Files).

You must hack through much deposit

Ere you know for sure who was it

Came to burial with such honour in the Files

(Only seven seasons back beneath the Files).

“Very great our loss and grievous—

“So our best and brightest leave us,

“And it ends the Age of Giants,” say the Files;

All the ’60—’70—’80—’90 Files

(The open-minded, opportunist Files—

The easy “O King, live for ever” Files).

It is good to read a little in the Files;

’Tis a sure and sovereign balm

Unto philosophic calm,

Yea, and philosophic doubt when Life beguiles.

When you know Success is Greatness,

When you marvel at your lateness

In apprehending facts so plain to Smiles

(Self-helpful, wholly strenuous Samuel Smiles).

When your Imp of Blind Desire

Bids you set the Thames afire,

You’ll remember men have done so—in the Files.

You’ll have seen those flames transpire—in the Files

(More than once that flood has run so—in the Files).

When the Conchimarian horns

Of the reboantic Norns

Usher gentlemen and ladies

With new lights on Heaven and Hades,

Guaranteeing to Eternity

All yesterday’s modernity;

When Brocken-spectres made by

Some one’s breath on ink parade by,

Very earnest and tremendous,

Let not shows of shows offend us.

When of everything we like we

Shout ecstatic: “Quod ubique,

“Quod ab omnibus means semper!”

Oh, my brother, keep your temper!

Light your pipe and take a look along the Files.

You’ve a better chance to guess

At the meaning of Success

(Which is Greatness—vide press)

When you’ve seen it in perspective in the Files.