The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

Is it Brit Rail? The beginning sounds a little like the preamble to Moody Blues' Kights in White Satin.

Sorry, that should have said Kites in White Satin.

or is it knits?

Nope.

Ministry of Funny Walks?

What about British Airways?

BTW, Are you sure that's "verse," and not just "prose" with strange "carriage returns?"

British BusWays?

Boxjam is right--no rhymes either.

Ministry of Sleepiness?

RAF?

No right answers yet. And, as the bonus answer will reveal, I think you'll agree "verse" is the correct description.

Royal Mail
Dylan Thomas

British Steel
Andy Partridge

>>Dylan Thomas

The verse continues:
"So, Leeeeettt'ssss
Drink and we'll drink and we'll drink and we'll drink
And we'll drink just a little bit more..."

I'll guess BBC radio.

For the bonus, I'll say Kaye Ballard.

Persistence pays off for James, whose answer the "The Royal Mail" is near enough for a win. (it was the General Post Office's film unit). The name of the film is "The Night Mail."

No right answer on the poet yet. Further attempts?

Kipling

joke
man: Do you like Kipling?
woman: I don't know. I've never kippled.

>>"So, Leeeeettt'ssss/Drink

You're quoting Shane McGowan.

Nope -- although it's interesting, I actually came to this because I was looking for a copy of a Kipling proto-science fiction story with a similar title.

Wallace Stevens

King Edward, right before his abdication.

Can't wait for my Goss Bust!

Robert Burrrrrrns? (but when did he live?)

William Carlos Williams

I'll just end the suspense: W.H. Auden. Here's the full text --

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,

Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,

The shop at the corner and the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:

The gradient's against her, but she's on time.

Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder

Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,

Snorting noisily as she passes

Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,

Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;

They slumber on with paws across.

In the farm she passes no one wakes,

But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.

Down towards Glasgow she descends

Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,

Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces

Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.

All Scotland waits for her:

In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs

Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,

Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,

Receipted bills and invitations

To inspect new stock or visit relations,

And applications for situations

And timid lovers' declarations

And gossip, gossip from all the nations,

News circumstantial, news financial,

Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,

Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,

Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,

Letters to Scotland from the South of France,

Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands

Notes from overseas to Hebrides

Written on paper of every hue,

The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,

The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,

The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,

Clever, stupid, short and long,

The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep

Dreaming of terrifying monsters,

Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:

Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,

Asleep in granite Aberdeen,

They continue their dreams,

And shall wake soon and long for letters,

And none will hear the postman's knock

Without a quickening of the heart,

For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

That's funny since most of our best modern poetry is also used in advertisements.