Poem Richard Cory

Essay by krys528College, UndergraduateA+, April 2004

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Poetry Assignment "Richard Cory"

Richard Cory is a poem written by Edwin Robinson, he uses a variety of poetic elements. Poetic elements are imagery, rhyme scheme, symbolism and hyperbole to name a few. Robinson's most common elements used in this poem are rhyme scheme and hyperbole. Robinson uses many elements, you can tell though out his poem that he's trying to make the 'flow' of the poem easy for it's readers. He makes the poem string together, he makes it come together but he gets the story across.

His first use of elements is rhyme scheme. He uses this together in the first and third line. Rhyme scheme is when the last word in the sentence rhymes or sounds very similar that it is simple of it to roll off our tongue.

'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.


As you can see from the excerpt above, Robinson uses the words town and crown, as well as him and slim as his rhyme scheme in that model. He makes it very straightforward for the reader to find these elements and point them out. Robinson in addition has the use of a hyperbole in the statement 'Clean favored and imperially slim.' He uses the word imperially, for exaggeration of the word slim. He is trying to illustrate that the man is of great size.

'And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked:

But he still fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good morning" and he glittered when he walked.'

In this second paragraph the author uses rhyme scheme once more with the words talked and walked. You get the sense that he...