Richard Cory

Richard Cory, poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, published in the collection The Children of the Night (1897). “Richard Cory,” perhaps his best-known poem, is one of several works Robinson set in Tilbury Town, a fictional New England village.

The Tilbury Town community, represented by the collective “we,” narrates the four-stanza poem about Richard Cory, a mysterious fellow villager. The villagers admire him for his wealth, education, and manners. An object of their fascination and envy, he reminds them of royalty. Their ignorance of his troubled soul is underscored by the surprise ending, which reports his suicide with understatement.