Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CAPUT MORTUUM, by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON


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CAPUT MORTUUM, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Not even if with a wizard force I might
Last Line: Whether he play to win or toil to lose.
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


NOT even if with a wizard force I might
Have summoned whomsoever I would name,
Should anyone else have come than he who came,
Uncalled, to share with me my fire that night;
For though I should have said that all was right,
Or right enough, nothing had been the same
As when I found him there before the flame,
Always a welcome and a useful sight.

Unfailing and exuberant all the time,
Having no gold he paid with golden rhyme,
Of older coinage than his old defeat,
A debt that like himself was obsolete
In Art's long hazard, where no man may choose
Whether he play to win or toil to lose.





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