“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 everythingTo 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.”Edwin Arlington Robinson Children of the Night (1910).
“Are we no greater than the noise we makeAlong one blind atomic pilgrimageWhereon by crass chance billeted we goBecause our brains and bones and cartilageWill have it so?”Edwin Arlington Robinson The Man against the Sky (1950).
“Your Dollar is your only Word,The wrath of it your only fear.You build it altars tall enoughTo make you see, but your are blind;You cannot leave it long enoughTo look before you or behind.”Edwin Arlington Robinson Cassandra (1950).