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. 

Poet: Edwin Arlington Robinson
Poem: Caput Mortuum

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