"Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson

The poem "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson is a poem written about the town aristocrat named Richard Cory. It is written with four quatrain stanzas with a rhyme scheme of a, b, a, b, for each stanza. The poet's use of hyperboles and royal comparisons when describing Richard Cory help to elevate him above the townspeople, and his casual mentioning of Cory's suicide leaves the reader in a state of shock. The first stanza …

…the last line seems fine, in fact even the second to last line still does not hint that anything is wrong. The poet does this to show that the rest of the town new nothing of who the real Richard Cory was, otherwise they would have noticed something was wrong. The message this poem gets across is that outward appearance does not show who a person is, only what the person wants others to know.