Here's one poem I've always liked, Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson. I don't know much about him, or about poetry or about analyzing writing. Yet I believe you'll feel something from reading this.Richard Cory
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.
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—
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;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
The ending, while unexpected, is something everyone understands--that we often don't see other people's inner struggles.
To me, it makes the character Richard Cory all the more impressive. For others saw him as a gentleman. Pleasant. Soft-spoken.
His internal distress didn't mar how he treated the rest of the world.
