In his poem "Richard Corey," Edward Arlington Robinson responds to the "grass is always greener on the other side" presumption with an ironic perspective. Robinson's speaker in the poem presupposes Richard Corey is everything he and other people could want to be since Corey possesses, materialistic wise, all that can make one happy in life. The speaker takes for granted the idea that wealth brings happiness and his language initially shows no perception that it might bring emptiness rather than happiness. Through describing the townspeople's view of an upstanding citizen, Robinson's speaker reveals that wealth does not always bring the inner peace that one desires: it merely creates an illusion of such happiness. Through the language and prosaic effects he uses in "Richard Corey," E.A. Robinson can effectively create a poem whose structure coincides with the ironic tale of its subject.
             "Richard Corey" is written in four stanzas of regular alternating rhyme scheme in which the structure is abab cdcd efef ghgh; the overall form is similar to that of the elegiac quatrain which rhymes abab. However, it is the substitutions to the base regular iambic meter in "Richard Corey" which best creates the foundation for the story of the wealthy Richard Corey. Robinson's speaker observes in the first stanza that Richard Corey is a man apart from the rest of the town. "Whenever Richard Corey went downtown We people on the pavement looked at him (1-2). While the first line is regular iambic pentameter, line two begins with a spondee in the initial position, which emphasizes that Richard Corey is a man apart from the "We" or other townspeople. This separation of Corey from "We" is also evident in the words the speaker uses as it shows that the other people and he are "down" below on the pavement, looking up at Richard Corey, who stands above them. The speaker continues to describe Corey; "He was a gentleman from sole to crown Clean favored, and im...