Explore "The Files" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(THE SUB-EDITOR SPEAKS)
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 future 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.