| Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921. |
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| VIII. Avon’s Harvest, Etc. |
| 11. Caput Mortuum |
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| 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, | 5 |
| Or right enough, nothing had been the same | |
| As when I found him there before the flame, | |
| Always a welcome and a useful sight. | |
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| Unfailing and exuberant all the time, | |
| Having no gold he paid with golden rhyme, | 10 |
| 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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