Great Regulars: Whoever gave [Sir Walter] Raleigh's poem

its traditional title, "On the Cards and Dice," provides a riddle-spoiler right from the outset. That giving-away of the game seems to assume that the poem works beyond its game-playing. Does it, despite its self-parody of mysterioso rhetoric, somehow elevate banal games of chance like cards and dice? The poem as a whole is, after all, itself a kind of game. Or does this piece of writing simply debunk the tone and language of prophecy, mocking the manners of mystery?

"On the Cards and Dice"

from Robert Pinsky: Two Riddles

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