Explore "Caput Mortuum" by Edwin Arlington Robinson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.