Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning American poet born in Maine. Robinson studied at Harvard University, where he published his first poems in the Harvard Advocate. He moved to New York City in the 1890s, and in 1896 he published his first volume of poetry, The Torrent and the Night, at his own expense. Unable to make a living as a poet, Robinson took a job as an inspector for the New York City subway system. He gained little attention for his poetry until 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt wrote a magazine article praising Robinson’s poetry collection Captain Craig and Other Poems. Soon after, Roosevelt offered Robinson a position in a U.S. Customs House, a job that he kept from 1905 to 1910. The Man against the Sky (1916) became his first major success. In 1922, he won a Pulitzer Prize for Collected Poems, and in 1925 he won another Pulitzer Prize for The Man Who Died Twice. He was awarded his third and final Pulitzer Prize in 1928 for a trilogy of poems based on Arthurian legends.

Richard Cory

This poem was published in Robinson’s 1897 collection, The Children of the Night.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

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And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

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And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

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And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

(1897)