On "Mr Flood's Party"

Ellsworth Barnard
Robinson's language, however, is always the result of taste and temper, not of conscious theorizing; and therefore in each poem it
adapts itself without difficulty to the materials and the mood. Hence, the range of his interests and sympathies, the sweep and
intensity of his vision, give birth to more various forms of expression than are to be found in the work of most of his contemporaries.
The words are not always those of simple men, nor the music always the steady elemental rhythm of the outward movement of daily
life. Beneath the surface of even normal existence are unsounded depths of endurance, unsuspected surgings of desire. To deal justly
with these is a task to which the poet must devote the full resources of language, however long and often some of them may have
been used before. To reject the old because it is not new is mere affectation.
So it is without hesitation that Robinson resorts at times to the grand style and to the rhetorical devices that have been for centuries
an accepted part of the poetic craft of the Western world. The sober and serviceable words that fit the unreflective Reuben Bright,
gripped suddenly by dumb grief, yield in the portrait of Eben Flood, for whom derelict years have not dimmed the remembrance of
other days when stately doors stood wide to receive him and a world of achievement lay all before him, to a rich and resonant music
only a little thinned by distance.
Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He Stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Ebens eyes were dim.
On this passage we may pause for a brief analysis of sound effects and the devices by which they are secured. Of these, two are
dominant, assonance and alliteration: the placing near each other of stressed syllables in which the same or similar vowel sounds
occur in conjunction with different consonant sounds; and the spacing at close intervals of stressed syllables beginning with the same
or similar consonant sounds followed by different vowel sounds. Something halfway between these two is the use of differing vowel
sounds at the beginning of stressed syllables. Further, the use of the same consonant sound at the end or in the middle, as well as at
the beginning, of adjacent words is not without effect.
Thus, in the stanza quoted, we find instances of assonance in such combinations as "valiant," "armor," and "scarred"; "road,"
"Roland's," "ghost," "below," and "town"; "winding" and "silent"; and "phantom," "salutation," and "rang." Alliteration occurs
unobtrusively in "scarred," "stood," and "silent"; and more obviously in "town" and "trees." Different vowels at the beginning of
stressed syllables are found in "end," "armor," and "outworn"; in "other" and "honored"; and in "old" and "eyes." The most obvious
repetition of a consonant, leaving aside alliteration and rhyme is that of d in "end," "scarred," "stood," "middle," "road," "had,"
"honored," "dead," and "old"; but the repetition of 1 and n also contributes to the total effect.
There seems no point in carrying such analysis further. If the reader chooses, he may note in the quotations throughout this study the
constant presence of the devices just described. The main concern of the critic is not with the process but with the result: with how the
sound supports the meaning, how it clarifies or intensifies the character, the mood, or the philosophic conception that the poet is
striving to incarnate in words.
[. . . ]
Only, an age of doubt has intervened, and his most common moral is that moralizing is dangerous.
From this attitude springs the practice, already noted in the sonnets, and followed also in some of the finest of his other short poems,
of simply telling his story and leaving the application to the reader, only attaching at the end a summary or restatement that may give
rise to reflection. Here we find The Gift of God, The Poor Relation, Miniver Cheevy, Vickery's Mountain, and Mr. Flood's Party. The last of
these will show the poet's gift for compressing into a few seemingly effortless concluding lines the mood and theme of the whole. Mr.
Flood's partyattended by his two selves, his jug, and two moonsis ended, and the hard reality presses in upon him once more:
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.
from Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Study. Copyright 1952 by The MacMillan Company.
James Allen, Jr.
Perhaps none of Robinson s works, though, show better than "Mr. Flood's Party" what Robinson could do, when he would, in subtly and
intricately interweaving image and symbol in a way that has come to be thought of as characteristically modern. Though he is no Eliot,
Joyce, or Yeats even here, in "Mr. Flood's Party" Robinson so skillfully implements his statement of theme with patterns of symbol and
metaphor that it seems certain that if he had written more consistently in this mode and less often in the flat, prosy manner of "Richard
Cory" and "Cliff Klingenhagen" his right to designation as major and modern might be more generally agreed upon than it has been in
the years since he lived and wrote.
The main theme or point of "Mr. Flood's Party" is a consideration of the effects upon human experience of the passage of time. And to
the elaboration of this theme virtually all of the major figures of speech or symbols in the poem are functionally and organically
related, either directly or indirectly. The first word in the poem, old, immediately touches upon the theme of the effects of time's
passing, while the next two words are also related to that theme as well as being symbolic in their relationship. For in giving the name
Eben Flood to his protagonist, Robinson created a sort of symbolic pun, which may be read either ebb and flood or ebbing flood. The
former reading, ebb and flood, suggests a pattern of coming and going which proves to be basically related to the poems theme and is
therefore the preferable reading; also, the latter reading, ebbing flood, has the additional disadvantage of an inherent self-contradiction
since ebb and flood are opposite concepts. However, no matter which reading of the pun one prefers, there can be little doubt that in
choosing such a name as Eben Food Robinson had in mind the common association between tide and time and perhaps even the
familiar adage, "Time and tide wait for no man." Thus in naming his protagonist as he did, Robinson related his character both to the
centrally significant pattern in the poem of coming and going; and to the poem's theme of the passage of time, which themselves are
interrelated, of course.
Another symbolism carefully initiated in stanza one is that based upon the contrast between Mr. Flood's solitary house high on the hill
and the community or town below. The main effect of the passage of time in the case of Mr. Flood, as in the case of many people, has
been loneliness; time has taken away those with whom he had any meaningful associations. Symbolically, Robinson has identified this
aloneness with the "forsaken" mountain top and the experience of human contact or communion with the populated valley below.
However, the dramatic action of the poem takes place neither at the mountain top nor in the valley, but, as Robinson carefully points
out in line two, between the two extremes. In keeping with this symbolic in-betweenness of location of the dramatic action, the
experience of Mr., Flood's party is somewhere in-between the two extremes of absolute aloneness and communion with other humans,
for after imbibing from his jug he has at least another Mr. Flood to be with. The jug, of course, and the whole episode of the party
reflect the touching and ironic effects upon a person of times leaving him without human associations. Such a person finds that the
pain of loneliness can be assuaged by the contents of a jug, as brought out partly symbolically and partly literally by the second Mr.
Flood, who is as much of human company as old Eben can now know and who, as such, Eben finds better than no company at all.
Another explanation for Mr. Flood's decision to go ahead and have a party"Well Mr. Flood,/ Since you propose it, I believe I will"is
brought out symbolically in stanza two where, the decision is made. In that stanza, two more sets of symbols relate directly to the
passage of time. First, the moon, whose luminescence pervades the scene just as its metaphorical force permeates the poem's
meaning, has been, with its ceaseless coming and going and waxing and waning, an age old symbol of change and the passage of

time. Moreover, Robinson stipulates that Mr. Flood's is a harvest or autumn moon, the fall of the year being a traditional symbol for late
years in life. The other symbol related to time's passage is the fleeting bird mentioned by old Eben. Birds, usually beautiful and
graceful, suggest youth, vigor, life itself perhaps; and such things are transient, like the bird flying swiftly away. Actually, Mr. Flood's
reference to a bird goes even further than this, though, for it involves a literary allusion. The poet who had said that the "bird is on the
wing"in about the same figurative sense that Eben and Robinson meant that linewas Edward Fitzgerald in his translation of the
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which also directly concerns itself with the effects upon man of time's passing. The lines from the Rubaiyat
alluded to read as follows: "Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring/Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:/ The Bird of Time has
but a little way/ To flutter and the Bird is on the Wing." The reaction to the transience of temporal things expressed in these lines and
repeatedly suggested elsewhere in the Rubaiyat is the philosophy of carpe diem, enjoy the day, make the most of this moment for the
next moment may take all away. Mr. Flood in his party is grasping what few small pleasures he can from fleeting life; almost with the
reader's approval, because of the sympathy evoked for his situation by Robinson's portrayal, he is adopting the philosophy of carpe
diem. As in the other cases already examined, then, the symbol and metaphor inherent in the allusion to the Rubaiyat functionally
implement Robinson's statement of theme.
Stanza three is perhaps the most thoroughly figurative stanza in the poem. Opening with a word that again reminds the reader of the
central theme, the word alone, Robinson then initiates a series of interrelated similes, symbols, and metaphors that make up the next
four lines. In line four the image of Roland is evoked, the jug held up to Eben's lips being compared to the horn that Roland blew to
signal Charlemagneall too latethat he needed help. The simile of Roland's ghost is made more effective by the metaphor in the
previous lines; instead of armor of iron and steel like that of Roland, old Eben wears an armor of "scarred hopes outworn," in other
words, the protective shell of detachment and imperviousness to the buffetings of life that one is able to develop after long years of
frustrations, defeats, and losses coming one upon another. And additional element of allusion in the knight and armor imagery may be
a suggestion of the glory of time past as compared to the bleak present; the likelihood of such an element of meaning is increased by
the fact that such use is made of chivalry and knighthood in other poems by Robinson, the most familiar of which is "Miniver Cheevy."
Still another touch of symbolic or metaphorical significance in the Roland image derives from the fact that Roland, though not as old as
Eben, was about to die, as one feels that Mr. Flood may be about to die in the not-too-distant future. This notion may be confirmed by
the fact that there are a good many suggestions of death in ~stanza three and in the poem in general. For example, Roland's ghost is
chosen rather than just Roland himself, and also the answer to Mr. Flood's imaginary blast upon the imaginary horn is a "phantom
salutation of the dead." In addition to these elements in stanza three, one recalls that Fitzgerald's line said that "The Bird of Time has
but a little way/ To flutter . . ." and that in stanza two Eben had said of the harvest moon ". . . we may not have many more." In short,
one feels that Eben and the former friends whose salutation answers his call may soon be reunited in death.
But the poem is not predominantly about death but rather about what Mr. Flood has left of life, which is very little. This heightened
moment of communion with himself, artificially stimulated though it may be, is about as rich an experience as is now possible to Eben
Flood. And after a fourth stanza in which Robinson does little more than indirectly comment upon Mr. Flood's past experience and
knowledge of life's difficulties through a couple of similes in reference to the jug, the poet describes that heightened momentthe
party itselfin stanzas five and symbol or metaphor, but it is cast in terms of dramatic dialogue and action rather than in the abstract
narrative style of "Richard Cory." The same is true of stanza six, except that in the last lines of this stanza some degree of symbolic
suggestion is achieved. The two moons in line seven, of course, represent the alcoholic effects of Mr. Flood's indulgence on the one
hand, the degree of the effect of the drink being thus indirectly indicated, but the two moons also symbolically parallel the two Mr.
Floods, one of which was also brought into existence the contents of the jug. But by far the most important symbol in the stanza is the
song itself, which makes the whole landscape harmonious. The song is important because, as Charles T. Davis points out in his article
on Robinson's imagery, Robinson fairly frequently used song and harmony to represent perception or spiritual truth or "understanding
or truth in human relationships." One might bend that meaning some, in this case, to suggest that the song simply represents a
moment of heightened experience. Davis also shows that Robinson frequently used light as a symbol in much the same way that he
used music and harmony, which gives even more meaning to the moonlight that permeates the scene and pervades the poem.
However, though the song and light probably both represent a moment of heightened experiencein traditional as well as in
Robinsonian termsany insight, perception of truth, or understanding of human relationships that they might represent in this case
would have to be rather limited or negative. Perhaps they could represent Mr. Floods awareness that he might as well make the most of
his own company as the only "human relationship" available to him, but hardly, anything more hopeful or optimistic than that. The
particular song that is sung itself suggests negativism and lack of a hopeful future, for as with the backward-looking elements of
meaning in the knight image, "Auld Lang Syne" suggests a moments re-evocation of better times from the past, but only that.
In the final stanza, the words the song being done not only say symbolically that the heightened experience is over but also again
suggest that Mr. Flood's life itself may nearly be done, a suggestion corroborated by the weariness of Eben's throat. The line "There
was not much ahead of him" says figuratively what the preceding paragraph of this analysis concluded about Mr. Floods future
figuratively if the path up the hillside and the empty house at the top are thought ofand also what the symbols of the shut doors two
lines later say again. The, open door is another recurrent symbol in Robinson's work which Davis mentions, a symbol of entrance upon
a new world or a new life, a symbol of new vistas achieved by men as they progress from stage to stage of life (p. 386). It is
symbolically and ironically significant, then, that all doors are now shut to Mr. Flood, who can only look backward with himself to the
time when more genuine human associations had made new and meaningful experiences possible, backward to the "many doors/ That
many friends had opened long ago." The last two words of the poem, long ago, like the last two lines in general, touch once more upon
the poem's central theme, as did the first three words, old Eben Flood. And, as has been seen, the many symbols, figures of speech
and images throughout the poem also touch upon the same themethe theme of the effects upon man's life of the passage of time, of
the coming and going of life's tide, the waxing and waning of life's moon, the rising up and dying out of life's song.
Such carefully worked interplay of symbols and richly suggestive metaphorical language make "Mr. Floods Party" on of Robinsons
most successful short pieces. If he had written more consistently in the mode of "Mr. Flood's Party," using symbol and metaphor to
implement statement of theme and to avoid his "drift toward an abstract and somewhat arid speech" (Davis, p. 381) , Robinson might
perhaps today be more generally considered as equal to his fellow regionalist, Robert Frost, in both stature and modernity.
from "Symbol and Theme in 'Mr. Flood's Party.'" Mississippi Quarterly 15 (1962).
Wallace L. Anderson
An old man living alone on the outskirts of Tilbury Town has gone into town to fill his jug with liquor. Returning home, he stops along the
road and invites himself to have a drink. He accepts the invitation several times until the bottle is empty, after which presumably he
makes his way back to his "forsaken upland hermitage." "Turned down for alcoholic reasons" by Collier's, "Mr. Flood's Party," was first
published in the Nation, November 24, 1920. The origin of the poem goes back twenty-five years--to the time when Robinson was
working on his prose sketches. Harry de Forest Smith had told him of an interesting character that he knew. "I am going to take a
change of air," Robinson wrote Smith, "and write a little thing to be called 'Saturday,' of which you will be indirectly the father, as it is
founded on the amiable portrait of one Mr. Hutchings in bed with a pint of rum and a pile of dime novels." Mr. Flood is one of Robinson's
original "scattered lives," wonderfully transmuted over the years.
"Mr. Flood's Party" is in some ways much like "Miniver Cheevy" and "Richard Cory." It is a character sketch, a miniature drama with
hints and suggestions of the past; its tone is a blend of irony, humor, and pathos. Yet it is, if not more sober, at least mote serious, and
a finer poem. It is more richly conceived and executed, and it contains two worlds, a world of illusion and a world of reality. A longer
poem with a more complex stanza pattern and a heightened use of language, its theme fully informs the poem: it is dramatically
represented by Mr. Flood and given emotional and intellectual depth by means of interrelated allusions and images focused on a
central symbol. The theme is the transience of life; the central symbol is the jug. Both the theme and the symbolic import of the jug
are announced in the line "The bird is on the wing, the poet says," though only the theme, implicit in the image, is immediately
apparent. Its relationship to the jug goes back to its source in the Rubiyt of Omar Khayym:

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring

Your winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing.
Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
The transience symbols coupled with the eat-drink-and-be-merry philosophy of the Rubiyt prepare the way for Mr. Flood's party but
also intensify the poignance and sharpen the irony. In stanza three, the passage referring to "Roland's ghost winding a silent horn" is
the richest in the poem, both in language and in suggestion. It serves a multiple function. The likening of Mr. Flood with lifted jug to
Roland, the most courageous of Charlemagne's knights, blowing his magic horn presents a vivid picture, made both striking and
humorous by the incongruity. At the same time, however, it is a means of adding pathos and dignity to the figure of Mr. Flood, for there
are some similarities. By the time that Roland blew his horn the last time, all his friends were dead; like Mr. Flood he reminisced about
the past, and his eves were dim. Moreover, be had fought valiantly and endured to the end, and these attributes of courage and
endurance are transferred to Mr. Flood. (The expression "enduring to the end" has a double reference behind it--it calls to mind the
words of Jesus when he sent forth his disciples, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved," a statement that Browning said was the
theme of his "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." The Roland allusion is even more subtle. The comparison is not to Roland
blowing his horn in broad daylight and surrounded by the newly dead, but to the ghost of Roland, and the horn he is winding is a "silent
horn." Roland, the last to die, is seeking his phantom friends. So is Mr. Flood. Lighted by the harvest moon glinting on the "valiant
armor" of Roland-Flood, this is a world of the past, dim and mute. Fusion of figure and scene is complete. "Amid the silver loneliness /
Of night" Mr. Flood creates his own illusory world with his jug.
The significance of the jug symbol, foreshadowed by the Rubiyt and Roland references, becomes clear in an extended simile at the
mid and focal point of the poem:
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break.
The interplay of similarities and dissimilarities in the relationship of mother:child and Mr.Flood:jug is too delicate and suggestive to be
pinned down and spoiled by detailed analysis. Suffice it to say here that in the child the future is contained; in the jug, the past.
Memories flood in as Eben drinks, and he lives once more, temporarily secure, among "friends of other days," who "had honored him,"
opened their doors to him, and welcomed him home. Two moons also keep him company, one real and one illusory. A last drink and the
singing of "Auld Lang Syne," with its "auld acquaintance" and "cup o' kindness," and the party is over. And with a shock we and Mr.
Flood are back in the harsh world of reality which frames the poem and his present and fleeting life:
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below.
The loneliness of an old man, the passing of time; Eben Flood, ebb and flood. There is no comment, and none is needed.
The striking and functional contrast between the rich figurative language of stanza three in "Mr. Flood's Party" and the final unadorned
lines suggests something of the range of language found in Robinson's poetry.
From Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Introduction. Copyright 1967 by Wallace L. Anderson
W. R. Robinson
When nature became inhospitable to spirit for Robinson, he recognized that man, if he stands upright at all, stands alone; he is the only
instance of spirit and therefore the only evidence of its nature and destiny. When self-knowledge cannot come through communication
with nature, man must turn inward or to his kindto introspection or to what is "between man and man." With nature dead, man must
open himself to man, to his spiritual being mirrored in his own reflection or the fate of others. For this reason Robinsons immediate
subject is man. Nowhere does he announce this fact in so many words, yet there can be no doubt about it, his entire poetic work being
cogent testimony of it. Judging from his titles alonefor example, "Luke Havergal," "Eben Flood" . . . .
Correspondingly, as he became more sophisticated about truth, he became more intent upon, and more proficient at, cultivating
obscurity. Like Howells, and in accordance with the interests of realism, he regarded his work in the early stage of his career as largely
"an attempt to show the poetry of the commonplace." Though his theory and practice were in some ways as incongruent as
Wordsworths in Lyrical Ballads, he sought, nevertheless, to make poetry out of, or to find poetry in, the real as he understood it at this
timethings as they visually are. Consequently, his early poems at their best tended to be tight, succinct, sharp, concrete, lucid, vivid,
exact. Poems like "Flammonde," "Richard Cory," "Eben Flood," though each in different ways, derive their power from concreteness,
from clarity achieved through sharp observation. Instead of practice resulting in greater concreteness and vividness, which might seem
the logical and customary course, he became progressively more obscure, until in the late long poems his narratives are so dimly
motivated and tortuously plotted that it is a major task just to determine what happens in them. These poems are in no way devoted to
the poetry of the commonplace, and as a consequence the language in them becomes relatively dissociated from things seen, actual
speech, and concrete situations. Passionate, long-winded talk; general, abstract diction; relatively formal, "high-toned" syntax;
circumlocution and rhetoric become in them the hallmarks of Robinsons style.
From Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poetry in the Act. 1967 by the Press of Western Reserve University.
Nancy Joyner
"Mr. Flood's Party" doubtless stands in the Collected Poems as Edwin Arlington Robinson intended it, but a manuscript version of the
poem included in the Lewis M. Isaacs Collection of Robinsoniana in the New York Public Library concludes in an entirely different
manner from that of the printed version. Unfortunately, the manuscript is undated. It is, however, a signed, holographic fair copy.
Probably it was written prior to the one that was published, and, since it is not a rough draft, one must assume that Robinson at one
time seriously considered that version as the final form. Because the last stanza radically changes the interpretation of the poem, a
comparison between the two versions is instructive.
The concluding stanza in the manuscript is as follows:
"For auld lang syne."The weary throat gave out,
The last word perished, and the song was done.
He raised again the jug regretfully,
And without malice would have ambled on;
But hearing in the bushes a new sound,
He smote with new profanity the cause,
And shook an aged unavailing fist
At an inhuman barrage of applause.
While minor variations exist in the first six stanzas of the manuscript and the published form of the poem, it is only in the last stanza
that the change is significant. The first appearance of the poem concluded with this stanza:
"For auld-lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully

And shook his head, and was again along.

There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.
The poem was subsequently included in each edition of the Collected Poems. While minor revisions were made, the poem has not been
substantially changed since its first publication.
The differences in the two concluding stanzas are obvious. From almost every point of view the two stanzas stand in direct contrast to
each other: the Latinate, polysyllabic diction of the first is exchanged for simple monosyllables; rather than new action and dramatic
content there is a reiteration of what has already been established; instead of ironic surprise there is a tone of nostalgia. And most
significant is the change in the attitude toward Mr. Flood, from condescension and even mockery in the early version to sympathy with
a note of admiration for Mr. Flood's stoic endurance.
"Mr. Flood's Party" is one of Robinson's most often anthologized poems. Emery Neff finds it "the short poem which perhaps best
represents the quality of Robinson's personality and art." Robinson himself has been quoted as saying, "I suppose Mr. Flood is the best
thing I ever did." The high opinion of this poem may be related to the quality of Robinson's revisions.
from "An Unpublished Version of Mr. Flood's Party.'" English language Notes 7 (1969)
John Lucas
It is the withheld word that does the trick: not wearily, but "warily." This old man has too much native wit to be the object of
sentimental pity. For Robinson to draw our attention to this fact is proof enough of the comic regard in which he holds Mr. Flood, but it
surely emerges in the very way the story opens. How can you resist a poem that starts as this one does? It is so compelling, so much in
the manner of the born storyteller. As the poem continues, the tale becomes more comic, more outrageously strange, more humanly
fascinating. Robinson is so completely in command that he can switch the changes in the third stanza from the near-mocking
grandiloquence of the opening lines to the closing lines, which shame our smiles:
Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honoured him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.
Yet the closing lines clearly need the bracing effect of the mock-heroic that plays about the first half-stanza if they are not to stray into
mere pathos. And consider how much Robinson risks, and brings off, in the fourth stanza:
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:
The control of language in that stanza is as perfect as anyone could wish for. The simile of the tipsy old man setting his Jug down, like a
mother, with "trembling care," is so audacious and yet so obviously written out of regard for him and not for cleverness' sake, that it
doesn't seem the least bit ingenious or self-regarding. Moreover, the laconic phrase, "knowing that most things break," strikes me as
exactly the sort of triumph that Robinson's style can bring him: it quite miraculously holds the balance between the poet's resistance to
bathos and his need to honour that slightly indulgent but sure knowledge that Mr. Flood carries with him. So it is with the rest of the
poem. But here I have simply to quote:
[Lucas quotes the last three lines]
There is really nothing to say about that, except how wonderful it is. You can note the great line "There was not much that was ahead
of him," the wit that is unwaveringly attentive towards Eben's caution ("Secure, with only two moons listening"), the comic "Convivially
returning with himself"; and so on. But ticking off the points that make "Mr Flood's Party" a masterpiece comes to feel a very trivial
exercise. What perhaps is worth saying is that it is precisely because Robinson finds such scenes worth recording that he is so
invaluable a poet. For the subject of "Mr Flood's Party" hardly seems to warrant a poem at all and certainly not the major poem that
Robinson fashions.
From Moderns and Contemporaries. Copyright by John Lucas.
"Mr. Floods Party"
by Stephen Dunn
"Mr. Flood's Party," one of Edwin Arlington Robinson's Tilbury Town Portraits, above all shows his mastery of tone, and in this case how
such mastery rescues--almost entirely--his subject matter from the bathos with which it flirts. "Almost" will be one of the concerns of
this essay, though Eben Flood remains a memorable Robinson character, in the good company of Reuben Bright, Miniver Cheevy,
Richard Cory, and the less-defeated Cliff Klingenhasen.
Eben Flood, his aloneness intensified by old age, may or may not be a drunk, but on this particular evening he has the regular drinker's
comic sense of self-imposed propriety. He needs to give himself permission. For some, it's when the sun is below the yardarm; for Eben,
the solitary that he is, it's the need for social drinking, for a companion, to have, as the title suggests, a party. It's one of the smallest
and saddest parties ever registered in a poem, made so by Eben's elaborate formalities with his compliant alter ego. But the same
formalities make us smile, too, which is Robinson's genius. We are regularly distracted from bathos by felicities both tonal and prosodic.
I found myself admiring Robinson's ambition to work as closely as possible to his subject while still orchestrating all of its effects.
"Reuben Bright" and "Richard Cory," are also poems that display Robinson's gift for this kind of intimacy, though their famous endings
(one character tears down the slaughterhouse, the other goes home and puts a bullet through his head) succeed with tones so matterof-fact that they suggest a greater balance of distance and intimacy than Robinson was able to achieve at the end of "Mr. Flood's
Party." This may be why the last stanza doesn't resonate beyond what has already been established in the poem.
The poem's first stanza situates us immediately, both physically and psychologically. Its five-line opening sentence couldn't be much
better paced or orchestrated.
Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
Eben Flood is between a place that is forsaken and a town (we will soon learn) that no longer remembers him. And this hermitage of his
"held as much as he should ever know / on earth again of home." The word that pricks us is "again," because it suggests that home
was once a homier place, and no doubt also because of its consonantal resonance with the other n sounds, as those in "alone" and

"forsaken." And how adroitly Robinson emphasizes "paused" after the long clause that establishes Eben's plight. The three iambs
before it prepare us for an unstressed syllable. When instead we get a stressed syllable, we feel that a dramatic moment has been
properly timed and delivered, Eben has paused, warily. He's about to begin his party, and it would be too embarrassing for him if others
were about. In the lines that follow, we dont quite know how good and ironically understated "having leisure'' is until we read further.
And the road Eben is on is "his" in more ways than one, and more ways than one is how Robinson likes it.
Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more
commences Eben's address to himself and, almost in passing, allows us to hear that he doesn't expect to live much longer. The poet of
"the bird is on the wing" is Khayym. Eben has his prop; the social drinker offers a toast to the only companion he has, and acceptance
is guaranteed. They drink to the bird in flight. It's a toast to the departed or the departing--an excuse to indulge, perhaps even a death
wish. Probably both.
The third stanza deepens what we already know, and the highly stressed "a valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn" distinguishes itself
as language while complicating our attitude toward Mr. Flood. (Eben is valiant; he no longer even has scarred hopes.) We learn that he
once had been "honored" by his friends. The allusion is either to Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" or to the medieval
French poem "Chanson de Roland." The former suggests a quest and the latter a kind of stubborn heroism. If it's the former, it's for
purposes of comic disparity (Eben's quest is drink). If it's the latter, there's reason to receive it poignantly, since Roland, trapped by the
enemy, refused to blow his horn to signal help from Charlemagne's army until the moment of his death, just as plausibly, it is there to
suggest that Eben is already like a ghost. He can hear the town's "phantom salutation of the dead" calling to him.
But in stanza four, his context firmly established now, Robinson most artfully makes his poem resonate beyond its sentimental
concerns. "He set the jug down slowly at his feet / Knowing that most things break; / And only when assured that on firm earth / it
stood, as the uncertain lives of men / assuredly did not" are arguably the poem's finest moments, the poet allowing himself wise asides
happily mitigated--though not reduced--by the fact that he's talking about a jug. No feel of the didactic here. These editorials on the
human condition are rooted in setting and circumstance. Moreover, they represent a perfect blending of two sources, Eben's thoughts
and Robinson's--just the right intimacy.
Eben's handling of the jug, which carries in it a temporary surcease of loneliness, is likened to the tenderness with which a mother
would handle a sleeping child. This action is both comedic and heroic. We can imagine the slowness, the delicacy, with which a drunk
puts something down so as not to break it. Eben is in the middle of a journey between two equally undesirable places, home and town;
his heroism is in his effort toward good humor while he steels himself with drink. The jug is another character in the poem. In modern
parlance, it's his baby, and he will care for it as such.
His invocation to his second self, his drinking companion, is more convivial at this point than self-pitying, though it's an edgy
conviviality: "many a change has come / to both of us, I fear, since it was / last we had a drop together." The "I fear" registers with us,
as does the end of his toast, "Welcome home!" We feel the irony in that last word, emphasized by its placement and its rhyme. it
should be noted that Robinson employs only two rhymes (with one exception) in each of his eight-line stanzas: at the ends of the
second and fourth fines and the sixth and the eighth. Here Robinson gets maximum effect out of rhyme, even though it's more near
than exact. "Home" stops us, or is stopped for us by both its exclamation point and the click of cooperative sound. We have not
forgotten where he is. Home now is stupor, in the middle of nowhere.
The toast complete, Robinson mimics successfully the manners of the drunk who might also be a Puritan: "if you insist" and "Only a
very little." This is an engaging burlesque within the larger, pathetic scene. Tonally, at this moment, we as readers are not asked to feel
sorry for Eben. We are allowed to enjoy how well the poet, by blending tones, has been equal to the psychological and linguistic
imperatives of his task. The lines that follow serve further to demonstrate Robinson's deft comic timing, which is linked to his metrical
brilliance.
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.
So, for the time, apparently it did.
And Eben evidently thought so too;
Throughout, the poem has employed a mixture of blank verse and rhymed, often loose, iambic pentameter. The iambic pentameter has
been regular enough to permit Robinson many variations and substitutions. The illusion of natural speech has been maintained while
"the grid of meter" has served as underpinning. To my ear, the line, "For auld lang syne. No more, sit; that will do," arguably has seven
stresses. Only "For" and "No" and perhaps "will" would seem to be unstressed. But the prosodic fun occurs with the semicolon after
"air." It breaks the iamb-spondee-iamb flow of the line (a string of two-syllable feet), while conforming exactly to the way that we trust
Eben's elaborate formality with himself would be spoken. The ten-syllable line has been kept, but has been metrically fractured right at
the point where Eben, or at least half of him, is trying to stop drinking. The narrative coyness inherent in "apparently" and "evidently"
also serve the comic. Robinson would have us entertain that the narrator-observer, heretofore omniscient, is suddenly uncertain in this
highly managed fiction. The uncertainty serves to underscore the narrative playfulness at this juncture, as does the placement of "did"
after "do" as end words in successive lines. These are welcome balancing touches in a poem so potentially sentimental.
In the lines that follow, Robinson returns to a device that worked well for him earlier in the poem, the apparently positive word or
phrase that in context suggests a harsh irony. Earlier we were told "The road was his" and that Eben had "leisure." Now Eben is
"secure," a word set apart by commas, which denotatively means he's not worried about being overheard singing out loud. We wait a
full line before the "until" comes, and then his entire landscape echoes back to him the song of old times, his sad anthem.
I'm not sure what "with only two moons listening" is supposed to mean. It's a curious moment, the "'only" suggesting that Eben
expects more than two. My guess would be that Eben's selves each have a moon, or that to Eben's drunken eye there appear to be two
moons. Frost's enigmatic reading of the two moons ("Two, as on the planet Mars.") in his "Introduction to Robinson's King Jasper" seems
only to beg the issue.
When the landscape echoes "For auld lang syne," the poem reaches its climax. Eben cannot escape the sound of his own lamentation.
Afterward, his "weary throat gave out" and the poem spirals into unrelieved pathos. It is in this stanza that Robinson's compositional
balance of intimacy and distance--his ability to deliver to us with multiple tones this valiant, sad, and drunken man--fails him. He can
only sum up for us what we already know. One longs for some resonance comparable to what he was able to effect in stanza four, a
line that would evaluate and measure Eben's condition as much as it declares it, or the sudden rightness that makes poetry poetry.
"Mr. Flood's Party" is a very good poem by a very good poet, as close to a great poet as a very good poet can be. Who knows, perhaps
a great poet. I wouldn't argue. But in "Mr. Flood's Party," Robinson's language at the end neither pulls back far enough to position Eben
as sufferer, nor does he stay close enough to him to participate sufficiently in his thoughts. Instead Robinson gets caught in the middle,
a toneless ground that has to depend on easy (if momentarily effective) wordplay and juxtaposition: ahead/below; many doors/many
friends, would have shut/had opened. Closure is accomplished, but tonal resonance is lost.
Compositional intimacy, like most intimacy, may be at its best when one keeps in reserve something peculiarly his own to, at last, give
away. Robinson had said all he had to say about Eben halfway through the last stanza. But before that he gave us an exquisitely
managed portrait of a man presumably without family and who had outlived his friends, struggling one evening to create his own
solace.
From Touchstones: American Poets on a Favorite Poem. Ed. Robert Pack and Jay Parini. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1996.
Copyright 1996 by the President and Fellows of Middlebury College.
William Pratt
Of all Robinsons many failures, perhaps the most sympathetic is old Eben Flood of "Mr. Flood's Party," because in his case the failure is
from a weakness not of conscience but of flesh: old age has overwhelmed him and left him friendless, an unwilling exile, doomed to
holding an ironic "party" with himself. His name is as symbolic as Richard Cory's, since pronouncing Eben Flood as if Eben is short for
Ebenezer leads to the conclusion that while his fortunes may once have been at their flood, they are now at their ebb: "There was not

much that was ahead of him." We see Mr. Flood pathetically alone, on a hillside looking down at the town where he was once happy,
"Where friends of other days had honored him." Now he has only himself, and he has sought solace in drink, having carried along with
him "The jug that he had gone so far to fill," from which he offers a toast to himself in the silence and darkness. Robinson ironically
compares his Mr. Flood to two literary figures: Omar Khayyam, the Persian author of "The bird is on the wing" (Robinson quotes these
words in "Mr. Flood's Party" from Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubayatt: "the Bird of Time, has but a little while / To flutter, and
the bird is on the wing"); and Roland, the medieval knight who in The Song of Roland blew his horn too late to bring reinforcements to
the Christian troops of Charlemagne to save them from the attacking Moors. In the first case, Mr. Flood quotes Omar to say, not that he
has little time to enjoy wine, women, and song as Omar did, but that he has little time to live, and in the second case, he catches Mr.
Flood just as he is raising his jug to drink and says he is "Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn." The allusions imply a doubly ironic
contrast: Mr. Flood's drinking alone in old age shows neither the Persian poet's lighthearted hedonism nor the French knight's heroic
martyrdom, but an ironic pathos at the end of life.
Later in the poem, Mr. Flood "lifted up his voice and sang" the familiar New Year's Eve drinking song "For Auld Lang Syne." Burns's
Scottish words are nostalgic, but convivial, about "times long past," but they, too, have an ironic ring coming from Mr. Floods lips,
accented by the additional mockery of his slightly drunken condition, which is "Secure, with only two moons listening." There is a
saving humor in this tipsy figure to relieve the pathos in Robinsons realistic portrait of the old man, who at the end is left with a bleak
landscape around him and a lonely fate to contemplate, since
there was nothing in the town below
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.
Eben Flood is the last of his generation in Tilbury Town, and Robinsons poem places him in the New England townscape as it
dramatizes memorably, yet wryly, the pitiable state of extreme old age.
from Singing the Chaos: Madness and Wisdom in Modern Poetry. Copyright 1996 by the Curators of the University of Missouri
On "Richard Cory"
Lloyd Morris
The dramatist sets in operation a chain of circumstances in which his characters are unconsciously brought to book by their own past.
The method of the naturalistic novelist is quite different; absolved of the necessity of a demonstration, he tends to be less and less
concerned with incident and to become preoccupied with the effect of experience on character; the drama is purely internal and is
revealed by minute and acute psychological analysis. When this method is applied to dramatic material the very absence of the terms
in the demonstration essential to the dramatist produces the effect of irony. Consider, for example, Richard Cory:
[. . . ]
Here we have a man's life-story distilled into sixteen lines. A dramatist would have been under the necessity of justifying the suicide by
some train of events in which Richard Cory's character would have inevitably betrayed him. A novelist would have dissected the
psychological effects of these events upon Richard Cory. The poet, with a more profound grasp of life than either, shows us only what
life itself would show us; we know Richard Cory only through the effect of his personality upon those who were familiar with him, and
we take both the character and the motive for granted as equally inevitable. Therein lies the ironic touch, which is intensified by the
simplicity of the poetic form in which this tragedy is given expression.
from The Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson: An Essay in Appreciation. First published in 1923. Reissued in 1969 by Kennikat Press
(Port Washington, N.Y.)
Ellsworth Barnard
Form in poetry, however, as has been said, involves not only adherence to a central story or theme, but some kind of progress or
development toward a final effect to which each particular part has made its particular contribution.
A simple and famous illustration is Richard Cory . . . .
We need not crush this little piece under a massive analysis; a few more or less obvious comments will suffice to show how carefully
the poem is put together. The first two lines suggest Richard Cory's distinction, his separation from ordinary folk. The second two tell
what it is in his natural appearance that sets him off. The next two mention the habitual demeanor that elevates him still more in
men's regard: his apparent lack of vanity, his rejection of the eminence that his fellows would accord him. At the beginning of the third
stanza, "rich" might seem to be an anticlimaxbut not in the eyes of ordinary Americans; though, as the second line indicates, they
would not like to have it thought that in their eyes wealth is everything. The last two lines of the stanza record a total impression of a
life that perfectly realizes the dream that most men have of an ideal existence; while the first two lines of the last stanza bring us back
with bitter emphasis to the poem's beginning, and the impassable gulf, for most peoplebut not, they think, for Richard Cory
between dream and fact. Thus the first fourteen lines are a painstaking preparation for the last two, with their stunning overturn of the
popular belief.
To repeat this sort of analysis for each of Robinson's poems would be as profitless as tedious to most readers, who will want to do it
themselves if they want it done at all. We may, however, dwell a little on some of the patterns that the poet likes to follow. And first of
all, it is to be observed that the structure of Richard Corythe steady build-up to the surprise ending in the last line, is not
characteristic. This fact fits in with what was said in the preceding chapter about Robinson's handling of the sonnet, and the quiet,
unhurried close that he most often gives it; as well as with what has been all along implied concerning his distaste for every sort of
sensationalism. But sometimes, as in Richard Cory, a different turn of mind reveals itself, perhaps sprung from the perception that life
does have surprises, that sometimes only at the very last do we find the key piece that makes the hitherto puzzling picture all at once
intelligible.
from Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Study. Copyright 1952 by the MacMillan Company.
W. R. Robinson
"Richard Cory" is perhaps the best-known example of his respect for the inaccessible recesses of mans inner being . . .
The first reference to Tilbury Town occurs in "John Evereldown," which appeared in The Torrent and the Night Before (1896), Robinsons
first volume of poetry. Here, simply a place, it has not yet acquired a dramatic role. In other poems of the same volume, however, the
small-town community, though unnamed, does begin to assume such a role, as for instance in "Richard Cory," where the collective
"we" speaks as a character.
From Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poetry of the Act. 1967 by The Press of Western Reserve University.
Hoyt C. Franchere
In the Edwin-Emma-Hennan relationship, however, rivalry apparently developed into jealousy. The depth of the poet's involvement is
revealed in "Cortege," as has been said. To what extent that rivalry-jealousy pattern was subliminal is hard to say; but not, by any
means, was all of it so. Significantly, Edwin wrote to Harry DeForest Smith as early as March 11, 1894, betraying a conscious awareness
of the conflict that continued: "Your third belated letter came Saturday, and I was glad to hear that you are coming home in a fortnight.
You say that your time will be pretty well taken up, but you may be willing to take one or two brief vacations and listen to my five wild
sketchesnot including 'Marshall.' I have another in my mind on the philosophical enmity of two brothers who were not born for the
same purpose." [italics added]
In any case, knowing that the rivalry existed makes it easier to hear the bitter overtones in poems that seem indubitably to be portraits
of Hennan Robinson. "Richard Cory" comes first to mind because it is a nearly perfect representation of Edwin's next older brother; but,
since this poem was written early, it may have been merely a well-imagined projection of things to come or of things Robinson had

observed. "Bewick Finzer," "Bokardo," and "Flammonde," however, are, as the Memoir suggests, among the poems closely associated
with Hennan.
Cory, rich, "imperially slim," perfectly schooled in all the amenities, the most admired man in Tilbury Town, went home one day and
"put a bullet through his head." Manifestly, Hennan took the slower, more measured, course of drink; but the result was the same,
almost as though he sought death. How much more sharply the irony penetrates, though, if we know about the myth! It is doubleedged.
[. . .]
We have already seen, in an examination of those poems that reflect personal history, Robinson's involvement with the problem of
failure in our lives. Why he devoted so many of his writing hours to this subject is not easily explained. Possibly he was motivated by
his own failure to achieve recognition that he sought, a feeling that persisted in him for many frustrated years. Unquestionably, he was
moved deeply by the tragic incidence of failure in the lives of his two brothers. It is apparent, however, that man as failure became for
him a part of his cosmic view of the world he lived in. Perhaps the "why" was as inexplicable to him as the mystery of life itself. How he
treated his failure-figure, whose faces peered over the edge of his writing table, sometimes despondently, sometimes hopefully, is of
greater significance.
Broadly defined, the theme follows two patterns: one is the failure who seems to be beyond redemption, who does not, finally, possess
the saving grace of character that would find favor in men's eyes, or who does not experience some inner change that would render
less severe the general indictment against him. The other is the failure who for reasons of almost infinite variety is redeemed,
exonerated, saved, or in whom the reader finds some aspect or some alteration of the inner man that lifts him from the shame of
complete ignominy.
The first of these types is not so numerous as the second, but he is distinctly marked, even then. While in another relationship Richard
Cory was considered in the preceding chapter, he falls into the general class of the failure; and the poem in which he is the central
figure lives because it is a powerful statement of an inner, even if an undefined, tragedy in the life of one man. The external man the
"people on the pavement" praised and envied and acknowledged; for Cory, to them, seemingly had everything. What private sense of
failure, what personal recognition of his own inadequacy, or what secret unfulfilled longing drove Cory to suicide Robinson does not
say; he leaves the reason for his readers to determine. But the crashing climactic moment of the night that Richard Cory "went home
and put a bullet through his head" appalls every reader with its suddenness. After he has recovered from his shock and has reflected
upon the intensity of the poem created by the contrast of the somber people of the community on the one hand and the brilliant heroic
stature of Cory on the other, the reader is left with a sharp sense of emptiness, of a life wasted, of failureand of Cory's hidden agony.
from Edwin Arlington Robinson. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1968. Copyright 1968 by Twayne Publishers.
Radcliffe Squires
The suicide of Richard Cory is not, or ought not to be, a surprise. It is an inevitability, predetermined by the subjugation of selfhood.
Even more significantly, however, the subjugated self reclaims itself in the act of suicide. Not that the poem recommends suicide as a
way of asserting individuality. Rather, it observes an extreme gesture in an extreme case. To see the poem in this way is to see it as
neither bitter nor negative, at least not entirely so. We read ill if we cannot see that Richard Cory is granted an oblique triumph at the
end, for he has refused to suppose himself made happy by what "everyone" supposes will make him everyone happy. In short, Richard
Corys self emerges neurotically perhaps; still it emerges triumphant over the imposed role of "success."
From Edwin Arlington Robinson: Centenary Essays. Ed. Ellsworth Barnard. Copyright 1969 by the University of Georgia Press.
J.C. Levenson
"Richard Cory" conceals its powerful particularity by appearing almost tritely conventional. But since the surprise ending of Corys
suicide does not, after a first reading, surprise anyone but the "we" of the poem, it is worth looking for deeper causes of its hold on
readers. One the one hand, there is Robinsons tact in presenting the title figure. By his scheme, moral blindness is overcome, not by
factitious insight into another mind, but by respectful recognition of another person. So he avoids the nineteenth-century, commonsense method of realistic characterization and gives us nothing of his subjects motives or feelings. He sketches in Corys
gentlemanliness and his wealth, but not his despondency, and he lets the suicide seal the identity of the man forever beyond our
knowing or judging. On the other hand, he can characterize the chorus just because they lack individuality, and he invites us to judge
their blindness on pain of missing the one sure meaning of the poem:
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.
They do not serve who only work and wait. Those who count over what they lack and fail to bless the good before their eyes are truly
desperate. The blind see only what they can covet or envy. With their mean complaining, they are right enough about their being in
darkness, and their dead-gray triviality illuminates by contrast Corys absolute commitment to despair.
From Edwin Arlington Robinson: Centenary Essays. Ed. Ellsworth Barnard. Copyright 1969 by the University of Georgia Press.
Wallace L. Anderson
In April 1897 Robinson, reporting the local news to Harry Smith, wrote "Frank Avery blew his bowels out with a shot-gun. That was bell."
By the end of July he had completed, he told Miss Brower, "a nice little thing . . . . There isn't any idealism in it, but theres lots of
something else - humanity, may be. I opine that it will go." It has become one of the most familiar of Robinson's poems. But poems, like
people, sometimes suffer from what familiarity so often breeds. This is especially true if the work appears to be fairlv simple and
uncomplicated. It may be what led Yvor Winters to remark that "In 'Richard Cory' . . . we have a superficially neat portrait of the
elegant man of mystery; the poem builds up deliberately to a very cheap surprise ending; but all surprise endings are cheap in poetry,
if not, indeed, elsewhere, for poetry is written to be read not once but many times." This remark is itself surprising, for not all surprise
endings are cheap, nor does a surprise ending prevent a work from being read with pleasure more than once. The use of surprise is a
legitimate device that occurs in all literary forms. The issue is not whether the reader has been surprised but whether the author has
so prepared his ground that the ending is a justifiable one, consistent with the total context. Actually, "Richard Cory" has a rich
complexity that becomes increasingly rewarding with successive readings.
A wealthy man, admired and envied by those who consider themselves less fortunate than he, unexpectedly commits suicide. Cory's
portrait is drawn for us by a representative man in the street, who depicts him as "imperially slim," "a gentleman from sole to crown,"
"richer than a king." An individual set apart from ordinary mortals, Cory is, in their opinion, a regal figure in contrast to his admiring
subjects, "the people on the pavement." This contrast between Cory and the people, seemingly weighted in favor of Cory in the first
three stanzas, is the key to the poem. Nowhere are we given direct evidence of Cory's real character; we are given only the comments
of the people about him, except for his last act, which speaks for itself. Ironically, Cory's suicide brings about a complete reversal of
roles in the poem. As Cory is dethroned the people are correspondingly elevated. The contrast between the townspeople and Cory is
continued in the last stanza. The people
worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
but they went on living. Cory, wealthy as he was, did not live; instead, be "put a bullet through his head." This occurred "one calm
summer night." Calm, that is, to the people, not to Cory. Because the people "went without the meat, and cursed the bread," it might
seem that life was both difficult and meaningless to them. But difficulty is not to be equated with meaninglessness; in fact, Robinson is
suggesting just the opposite. "Meat" and "bread" carry biblical overtones that remind us that man does not live by bread alone. It is

"the light" that gives meaning. In opposition to meat and bread, symbols of physical nourishment and material values, light suggests a
spiritual sustenance of greater value. As such it clarifies the intent of the poem, for it reveals the inner strength of the people and the
inadequacy of Cory. Belief in the light is the one thing the people had; it is the one thing Cory lacked. Life for him was meaningless
because he lacked spiritual values; he lived only on a material level. Once this is realized, the characteristics attributed to Cory in the
first three stanzas take on added significance and become even more ironic: He was "a gentleman from sole to crown" (appearance
and manner); he was "clean favored" and "slim" (physical appearance); he was "quietly arrayed" (dress); he was "human when he
talked" (manner); he "glittered" (appearance); he was "rich" (material possessions); he was "schooled in every grace" (manner).
"Glittered" not only emphasizes the aura of regality and wealth but also suggests the speciousness of Cory. Even his manner is not a
manifestation of something innate but only a characteristic that has been acquired ("admirably schooled"). All these details are
concerned with external qualities only. The very things that served to give Cory status also reveal the inner emptiness that led him to
take his own life.
From Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Introduction. Copyright 1967 by Wallace L. Anderson.
David Perkins
"Richard Cory" concentrates on a particular character. The poem is no lyric self-expression, but an impersonal, objective report. The
setting is an American town of the time, the provincial imagination engrossed and dazzled by a figure of consummate gentlemanly
elegance (of royalty, as the townsfolk take it, if one regards a counterpoint in the images "crown," "imperially slim"). The idiom, though
cultured, is colloquial, not in the least "poetic." Except at the end, the poem selects the most ordinary incidents as points of focus and
plays down emotion.
Above all there are the irony and humor from which the poem chiefly derives its effectiveness. The surprise ending may be a little
easy, and the implied moral--something like "how little we really know about the lives of others!"--may be trite. (The "idea" of the
poem, Douglas Bush suggests to me, may have been taken from a bit in Bleak House, chapter 22.) But what matters is the attitude of
the speaker toward himself and especially toward the other townspeople: his self-awareness, ironic distance, and detached amusement
with the human comedy. The poem is subtle, however, and it is easier to sense this attitude than indicate its source. It depends very
much on the characterization of the speaker through language, syntax, and metrical form. The idiom ("clean favored," "in fine") is itself
"admirably schooled," the syntax controlled and orderly, and the neatness of the quatrains further contributes to the impression. One
infers that the speaker is an educated man and hence that his self-identification with the too-admiring townsfolk is half ironic, a
circumstance that becomes especially clear in the exaggeration of the lines,
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread.
The speaker has a self-conscious, fastidious awareness of his language. In the phrase, "yes, richer than a king," the "yes" means, "yes,
we even used the stock clich," and one thus understands that the phrasing throughout is adjusted in irony to convey the sayings and
feelings of the townsfolk more than his own--for example, the subtly telling clich, "from sole to crown," or the excessive enthusiasm
(and bathetic fall) in the phrase "imperially slim." A speaker so aware must also be aware of the discrepancy between the
commonplace actions of Cory (going down town, saying "good-morning," or simply walking) and the reactions of the townspeople
(staring from the pavement, "fluttered pulses," their feeling that Cory "glittered when he walked"). Even the initial metrical inversion of
the third line ("He was") counts by glancing invidiously at "we" others. The result is a reflective, shrewdly humorous portrait by
implication of the town and townsfolk. Low-keyed, cerebral, ironic, impersonal, mingling humor and seriousness and implicating a
whole social milieu, the poem was without precedent or even parallel in the 1890s.
From A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode. Copyright 1976 by the President and Fellows of
Harvard College.
Charles Sweet, Jr.
"Richard Cory," one of Edwin Arlington Robinsons most anthologized poems, is also one of the least examined. Those critics who have
considered the poem cast it in a familiar mold: that Richard Corys "soul is black with despair," that the people possess "the light," and
that finally the people ironically fail to see their wishing to he like Cory is ultimately ludicrous because of their own intrinsic spiritual
values.
The main problem with the popular interpretation is that it fails suitably to account for the tale being filtered through the mind of a
narrator, a single one of the "people on the pavement." The resulting view tends to thrust Richard Cory into the spotlight and deemphasize the character of the narrator. Perhaps we would do well to remember D. H. Lawrences admonition, "Trust the tale, not the
teller," and begin to view Richard Cory through the eyes of an unreliable, unaware narrator. Moreover, such a focal point has the
distinct advantage of helping to explain why Richard Cory really committed suicide.
As "Richard Cory" is only sixteen lines, we scarce need be reminded at the beginning that because of its compactness each word
becomes infinitely important. While stanza one introduces the narrator, more importantly it emphasizes his limited view of Richard
Cory. Line one introduces us to Cory while line two establishes that the narrator has only an external view of Cory. From this viewpoint,
then, the narrator proceeds to make an assortment of limited value judgements. Richard Cory resembles a king ("crown," "imperially
slim," and "richer than a king") ; obviously the speakers imagery (as well as movement in "sole to crown") reveal his concerns with
Corys status and wealth (further emphasized by "glittered"). Charles Morris notes the speakers use of anglicisms ("pavement," "sole
to crown," "schooled," and "in fine") pictures Cory as "an English king;" thus, the narrator can be seen expressing prejudices in terms of
nationalistic pride.
Stanza two, however, appears to contrast and even contradict the previously established viewpoint. Lines five and six offer a different
wording from any other lines as the "And he was always . . ." contrast with "(And) he was. . ." of lines three, nine, and eleven where the
emphasis is on Corys regal nature; not only the repetition of a similar structure in successive lines but also the addition of the word
"always" suggest that while external appearances seem eternal verities, they are only temporary illusions. Whereas Richard Cory
seems at times like a king the narrator admits he is always "quietly arrayed" and "human." Thus, the speaker appears to contradict
himself, or, more exactly, state the truth about Richard Cory: Cory is not a king; he is human. The narrator then confesses to his own
hyperbole, his own exaggerated viewpoint of the man. In the next lines the narrator even acknowledges ("But still") the collective fault
of the people; the lines might be paraphrased as follows: even though we knew deep inside us Cory was human, something else inside
compelled us to blow up his proportions ("he fluttered pulses" and "he glittered"). The narrator admits essentially to this view in lines
eleven and twelve:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
Why the people feel such a need has already been suggested by the representative narrators types of envy. Charles Burkhart remarks
that their view of Cory is "a familiar illusion which brightens their drab lives." Yet even these reasons conceal the deepest motivations.
In fact, to understand the final effects of Cory on the people we need to see precisely what other information the narrator reveals and
place it in its proper perspective.
In light of the narrators attitude line one establishes that it is Richard Cory who comes down town; in other words, Richard Cory makes
an attempt to communicate with the people. His activity contrasts with their passivity or stasis ("on we worked and waited").
Consonant with his general communicative attempts in line eight the very "human" Richard Gory tries to talk with the people. As
nowhere in the poem is it suggested that the people try to come to Richard Cory, nowhere is it either intimated that they approach
him, much less respond to him. Quite simply the people have erected a barrier around themselves and their only reaction to Cory is
stasis and silence. The phrase "when he talked" even suggests that Cory makes more than a toekn effort. The importance of
communication is revealed through a familiar Robinson image light. In line thirteen the speaker claims the people "waited for the

light" but in line eight the narrator has admitted that Richard Gory "glittered." We need not be reminded by Charles T. Davis that light
in the early Robinson represents "the perception of spiritual truth" and in the later Robinson, "the understanding or truth in human
relationships" to see that Richard Cory becomes a Promethean figure bringing the word of the necessity of human communication for
survival. Cory, not the people, then, is the man of spiritual values (such a context is suggested by the obvious religious overtones of
"meat," "bread," and "light"). The first three stanzas are not, as Wallace Anderson believes, "seemingly weighted in favor of Cory;" they
are weighted in favor of Cory.
Richard Corys suicide can thus be seen in a different light. Instead of suicide because of "inner emptiness" or "an absolute
commitment to despair," or because he was "sick," we are presented with a case of regicide; the townspeople with some degree of
consciousness have extinguished the light. The irony of the ending, then, is not that the people were endowed with greater values than
Cory or that simply they failed to understand his message, or even that the light they sought glowed in their midst all the time. The
irony is that through their own mental prejudices and unfounded exaggerations the people, like eagles, claw at Prometheus so that the
chains of inhumanity imprison him forever; it matters not that it is Cory who pulls the trigger since the people have pointed a weapon
at his temple.
Furthermore, it is probative to examine the speakers voice to establish the results of enforced alienation. The tone of the last two lines
is pure matter-of-factness; nowhere does the narrator betray any emotion over Corys death, and we might go so far as to say there is
a certain satisfaction in the narrators voice. Whereas the narrator had once looked up at Richard Corys "crown," he now looks down at
simply "his head." Appropriately the poem closes in darkness.
It obviously becomes necessary, then, to see Richard Cory certainly in more heroic proportions but also as more of a catalyst than focal
point. "Richard Cory" is not a painting of a gentleman, but a portrait of the portraiteer. The poem serves as an indictment of those who
study at a distance, of those who fail to get a feel of their subject, and of those who let petty personal emotions deprive themselves of
human companionship. While Robinsons temporal assessment may be exaggerated, his remark to Esther Willard Bates while walking
up West Peterborough that he was "perhaps, two hundred years in advance of his time . . . in . . . his absorption in the unconscious and
semiconscious feelings and impulses of his characters" points to our need not to judge by appearances either when we examine his
poetry.
From "A Re-Examination of Richard Cory." Colby Library Quarterly 9 (1972).
Richard Gray
In Richard Cory' he explores the anonymous surfaces of life in another way - by suggesting, however cryptically, the contrast between
those surfaces and the evident hell that lies beneath them. The character who gives the poem its title is described in admiring detail,
from the perspective of his poorer neighbours. 'He was a gentleman from sole to crown', the reader is told, 'Clean favoured, . . .
imperially slim' and 'rich - yes, richer than a king'. Comments like these hardly prepare us for the horror of the final stanza:
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and carved the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
The irony of these lines, and the poem as a whole, depends on the contrast between the serenity of Cory's appearance and the
violence of his death; its melancholy, upon our recognising that Cory - for all his privileges - is as acutely isolated and spiritually
starved as anyone else. 'There is more in every person's soul than we think', Robinson observed once, 'Even the happy mortals we
term ordinary . . . act their own mental tragedies and live a far deeper and wider life than we are inclined to believe possible in the
light of our prejudices'. This is precisely the lesson that the 'we' of the poem, Cory's neighbours in Tilbury Town, never learn: the night
on which Cory shoots himself remains 'calm' in their view, and the use of that word only underlines the distance between him and
them.
Quiet desperation, the agony that Richard Cory's neighbours failed to notice, is a distinguishing feature of many of Robinson's
characters. The despair may come, apparently, from emotional poverty ('Aaron Stark'), the pain of loss and bereavement ('Reuben
Bright', 'Luke Havergal'), or the treadmill of life ('The Clerks'): whatever, it is palpably there in an awkward gesture, a stuttered phrase,
a violent moment as in 'Richard Cory' or, as in 'The House on the Hill', the sense that behind the stark, simple words lies an
unimaginable burden of pain. Many of Robinson's poems, in fact, derive their power from reticence, a positive refusal to expand or
elaborate.
From American Poetry of the Twentieth-Century. Copyright 1990 by the Longman Group UK Limited.
John Lucas
Well, it isn't a perfect poem, but it is certainly a remarkable one.
....
It has the plain-jane manner that Robinson loves to affect and as a result of which he gains for himself just the right amount of freedom
to let otherwise unremarkable phrases stand out. Taken in context, the phrase "imperially slim," for example, has an almost sensuous,
stipple, and therefore slightly mocking grace about it. "Richard Cory" is wry, grim, laconic: it is a typical Robinsonian perception of the
bleak comedy of the human condition, and this perception features in much of his best--and worst--work. In addition, the poem has
that first-rate anecdotal quality which Robinson shares with Hardy. . . .
More importantly, however, he also shares with Hardy the ability to tell a story in verse in such a way as to let the smallest and most
insignificant detail take on meaning and value. (Even the "calm" summer night in "Richard Cory' isn't quite the irrelevant detail it may
at first seem, though the point it is making is admittedly an obvious one.)
From Moderns and Contemporaries. Copyright 1985 by John Lucas.
William Pratt
Richard Cory, the wealthiest man in town, whose wealth, instead of making him happy, only makes him envied by the townspeople and
isolated from them. He is a success in their eyes but a failure in his own, as we judge from the fact that, despite his high position in the
town, he commits suicide. The motive for his suicide remains a mystery, for Robinson portrays him only from the outside, from the view
of those who admired him and "thought that he was everything / To make us wish that we were in his place." Since the reason for his
death can never be fathomed, Richard Cory is one of Robinsons best-known but most enigmatic characters. No matter how many
times they are read, the final lines of the poem "Richard Cory" never lose the shock of his sudden and unexpected end:
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Was it his conspicuous wealth, his lonely existence without family or kin, or perhaps some secret crime he committed that led him to
take his own life? We never know; what we are left with is the darkness inside his soul, which only grows more impenetrable as one
reflects on it. Robinson keeps himself out of the poem, letting it be told by the people of the town, the "we" who are left to puzzle it out
at the end. Despite having a name symbolic of a noble familyRichard Cory rhymes with glory and evokes the name of Richard Coeur
de LionCorys death leaves behind no other "king" in Tilbury Town.
from Singing the Chaos: Madness and Wisdom in Modern Poetry. Copyright 1996 by the Curators of the University of Missouri
On "Miniver Cheevy"
Ellsworth Barnard

In Miniver Cheevy, where to Miniver's alcohol-eroded mind it is the age and not himself that is out of tune, the terseness of the image is
that of a local idiom:
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.
[....]
There are, however, other poems in which the contribution of form to effect is more obvious; and some analysis of these will throw light
on the compositions that are more subtly contrived. In Miniver Cbeevy, for instance, the short last line with its feminine ending
provides precisely the anticlimax that is appropriate to the ironic contrast between Miniver's gilded dream and the tarnished actuality:
Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.
Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval grace
Of iron clothing.
[....]
In the dramatic poems comedy results if the disparity is never perceived by the character mainly involved, as in Miniver Cbeevy . . . .
from Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Study. Copyright 1952 by the MacMillan Company.
W. R. Robinson
Robinsons desire to make accurate reports about objective states of affairs led him, in his early poetry mainly, to "hold up some
fragment of humanity for a moments contemplation"as he perhaps did in "John Evereldown," "Miniver Cheevy," and "Richard Cory,"
indeed, all his well-known poems about eccentric, small-town characters.
From Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poetry of the Act. 1967 by The Press of Western Reserve University.
Radcliffe Squires
"Miniver Cheevy" is usually described as a mocking self-portrait, but such an observation tells us little about the poem itself. Indeed,
such phrases as "mocking self-portrait" are usually a means of dodging a poem. I suggest that one must ask why Miniver Cheevy (not
Edwin Arlington Robinson) prefers an earlier, more "romantic" era than his own, what it is that he loses, if anything, by being out of
phase with his time, and, finally, if his anachronistic attachment is virtuous or vicious. These questions burden an admittedly middleweight poem and I shall not burden it further with specific answers. Still, does not the sum of reasonable answers amount to an
impression that Miniver's escapism is really an effort to establish an individuality which a world of "progress" denies?
From Edwin Arlington Robinson: Centenary Essay. Ed. Ellsworth Barnard. Copyright 1969 by the University of Georgia Press.
Hyatt H. Waggoner
Miniver is the archetypal frustrated romantic idealist, born in the wrong time for idealism. He is close enough to being Robinson himself
so that Robinson can smile at him and let the pathos remain unspoken.
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons.
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
Here and throughout the poem the relation between what Miniver knows and what the speaker knows is subtle and effective. Miniver
wept and the poet does not weep, but not because he thinks there are no reasons to weep. Robinson knew too much about the reasons
for an idealist to weep to permit him to make Miniver a mere butt of humor. Apart from his intellectual reasons, which I have already
said enough about, there were more personal and emotional ones that are relevant to any discussion of Robinson's identification with
Miniver Cheevy. Robinson was born the third son of a family whose hearts were so set on having a daughter this time that they had
made no provisions for the name of an unwanted son. For more than six months the boy remained unnamed, until strangers at a
summer resort, feeling that he ought to be granted an identity beyond that of simply "the baby," put slips of paper with male first
names written on them into a hat and chose someone to draw one out. The man who drew out the slip with "Edwin" written on it
happened to live in Arlington, Massachusetts, which seemed to provide the easiest choice for a second name; and so by an "accident
of fate," we have a poet named Edwin Arlington Robinson. Robinson hated the name and thought of himself as a child of scorn--and he
had reasons.
Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.
Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.
Like Miniver too, Robinson "dreamed of Camelot"--and wrote three very long, and very tedious, Arthurian poems in which the
"dreaming' is compulsive and unrecognized. But in "Miniver Cheevv" the dreaming is compulsive only for Miniver, not for the poet. Who
would not turn to the past for his values if he lived in an age when the "facts" of coldly objective knowledge seemed to leave no room
for any "ideal" values and when a "mere poet" who made no money was considered a failure by Tilbury Town's standards? For Romance
to be "on the town" meant for it to be the object of the township's charity, in the poor farm or on home relief; in either case the object
not only of "charity" but of the scorn that would accompany it. "Vagrants"--tramps--would sometimes spend a few days or weeks "on
the town" before wandering on. The connection between Miniver and Emerson comes through Captain Craig, who was also described
as a "vagrant" and was also the object of charity; for the penniless philosopher of the earlier poem was not, as critics have so often
said, Robinson himself but Emerson in extremis.
Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.
Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.
But unlike the Captain, Miniver is Robinson, or at least that part of Robinson that Robinson recognized as being romantic and idealistic.
He too had "thought, and thought, and thought, / And thought about it," without arriving at any conclusions definite enough to be
stated very clearly, even to himself. He too had resented his poverty while condemning practical materialism and popular notions of
success. He too had "called it fate" and for many years "kept on drinking." A good deal of the time he was almost as convinced as
Miniver that he had been "born too late."

It should be unnecessary to say that such a lining-up of the parallels between Robinson and his character is no substitute for a close
critical analysis of the ways in which the poem works. My purpose in calling attention to the analogy is twofold. First, to illustrate the
earlier generalization that Robinson wrote at his best level in the Tilbury Town poems when he wrote about a projection of an aspect of
himself; and second, to prepare the way for a further conclusion, namely, that the side of himself that Robinson could stand off from
and smile at was the believing side, never the deeper self that felt only the grief.
From American Poets: From the Puritans to the Present. Copyright 1968, 1984 by Hyatt H. Waggoner.
Wallace L. Anderson
Even though the general idea of "Miniver Cheevy" is clear, the reader who does not know what is meant by the expression "on the
town" misses half of the humor and irony of the poem. To be "on the town" means to be supported by the town, a charity case. Miniver,
in other words, is the town ne'er-do-well, the town loafer. The poem is built on the ironic contrast between the unheroic Miniver as be is
and his dreams of adventure, romance, and art associated with heroic figures of the Trojan War in ancient Greece, King Arthur's knights
in the Middle Ages, and the dazzling brilliance and corruption of the Medici in the Renaissance. What a great figure he might have
been, Miniver reasons, had he been born at the right time. That he has not succeeded is not his fault; he uses the classic excuse: the
world is wrong! But that in all likelihood he would not have achieved much at any time is made clear by the way Robinson handles his
material. The sequence of verbs is used with telling effect: assailed, wept, loved, sighed, dreamed, rested ("from his labors!"),
mourned, cursed, scorned. Mainly, what Miniver did was think. Added irony and humor come from Miniver's attempts to apply his
"intellect" to his situation:
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.
Ordinarily two "thoughts" would have been sufficient to make a point; three "thoughts" would have emphasized the idea of real,
intense thinking; but the addition of the fourth "thought" changes the tone of the stanza entirely, making it absurd. What all this
thinking amounted to is indicated by the continuation of the sequence to its conclusion in the final stanza, where "thinking" is
paralleled by "drinking" ("kept on thinking . . . "kept on drinking"). The repetition of "thoughts" creates an impression of circularity, of
going round and round, and establishes a link with "and he had reasons" in the first stanza. Miniver escapes from the world of reality
into a world of dreams induced by alcohol. To each stanza the short last line with its feminine ending gives an appropriately tipsy
rhythm. The name Miniver with its suggestion of the Middle Ages, patchwork royalty, and minuteness, coupled with the diminutive
Cheevy, sums up his minimal achievement. The tone of the poem is one of humor, pathos, and sympathetic understanding, but there is
a mocking note also that intimates that Miniver's unfortunate situation is not the result of any cosmic flaw.
From Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Introduction. Copyright 1967 by Wallace L. Anderson.
Hoyt C. Franchere
Moreover, even those poems most clearly identified with the myth, with personal history, often transcend the strictly individual and
personal life of the character described. In "Miniver Cheevy," without question a self-portrait, Robinson could laugh at the
contradictions in his own life; but, while laughing, he could see that Miniver was a character to be projected into the universal. If he
held the glass before his eyes and saw through himself, that was one thing and was important because it gave the poem substance
and a sense of the real. But Robinson was acutely aware of the complex and highly structured nature of poetry; and he was, moreover,
too skillful a craftsman not to insist upon excellence in poetic form. Further still, he was especially conscious of the quality of language;
the variable responses that words can and do elicit. In Cheevy, juxtaposed contrasts of past and present, of ideality and reality, of
contempt for money and a recognized need for it, of Art and Romance on the one hand and vagrancy on the other: these are the
elements that lift the poem onto a high plane of artistic achievement. Language and structure agree perfectly; and, as Robert Frost
once noted, that fourth "thought" in the last line of the seventh stanza, lying in wait for the reader just around the corner of the
preceding line, is a crashing crescendo of the irony infused into the whole poem. [. . . ] In "Miniver Cheevy" Robinson portrays with wry
irony a chap who misses, and complains about missing, all the beauty and all the glorious evil of the past. Paradoxically, the reader
smiles and is sad; for Miniver is a humorous figure and at the same time one to be pitied. Unredeemed and unredeemable, Cheevy
scratches his head and coughs; he keeps on swigging his liquor and sinks into a comfortable oblivion.
. . . [Robinson] seems usually to have been most sharply aware of structure; aware, too, of the particular impact upon the reader he
could expect by arranging his words in particular relationships. Seldom did he conceive a poem in his head and dash it onto paper as
rapidly as it had come to him. His irony, especially in the short poems, is sharper or more humorous, as the case may be, when he put
a word in a certain position in a line. Robert Frost, as has been said, saw the power in the repetition of the word "thought" as it appears
in the next to last stanza of "Miniver Cheevy."
Miniver thought and thought and thought
And thought about it.
The position of the fourth "thought" accounts for the weighted irony of the entire stanza. Similarly, the adjective "ripe" in the first line
of the fourth stanza ("Miniver mourned the ripe renown") enhances the irony of the first two lines. We could insist that Robinson was
concerned with alliteration chiefly in this instance; or we could likewise note that the word "ripe" has a peculiarly effective meaning as
well. But its position in the sentence, a position of emphasis, is equally significant. Looking backward to "mourned" and forward to
"renown," it becomes the key to the ironic statement.
from Edwin Arlington Robinson. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1968. Copyright 1968 by Twayne Publishers, Inc.
Winifred H. Sullivan
"Miniver Cheevy" is generally regarded as a self-portrait. The tone, characteristics sketched by Robinson and shared by the poet and
Miniver, and the satiric humor of the poem all lead to that interpretation. Yet, although as a satire of the poet himself it is a delightful
poem, Robinson jousts with a double-edged satiric lance. More than a clever spoof of Robinson as Miniver, the poem satirizes the age
and, especially, its literary taste.
The more readily acknowledged thrust is, of course, his satire on himself. David Nivison offers as evidence that the poem is a selfparody the fact that the poet customarily found some compassion for his characters and some redeeming quality in failure. In this
poem Robinson does not sympathize with Miniver, but lampoons his faults and "laughs at him without reserve in every line." Moreover,
Robinson frequently made fun of himself in letters to his friends and, like Miniver, he was lean, he drank, and in the eyes of early
twentieth-century America he was a failure. In that materially-oriented, production-minded society Robinson, like Miniver, was a
"minimal achiever." The poem's combination of feminine endings and short final stanzaic lines contribute to the satiric effect, Ellsworth
Barnard notes, as do the images and thoughts conveyed. Overtly, "Miniver Cheevy" emphasizes Miniver and gains its unity by the
repetition of the name, the full name appearing at the beginning of the first and last stanzas and "Miniver" opening the intervening
stanzas. Furthermore, by making his character ludicrous, Robinson makes clear within the context of the poem that Miniver is out of
tune with the age.
The brilliance and sharpness, however, of the Miniver edge of the satiric blade (to use the metaphor that seems in keeping with
Miniver's visions of swashbucklers) or, more precisely, the reader's tendency to see the poet in Miniver, put into shadow the other edge
of the blade, the poem as a satire on the age. Although Robinson recognized himself as out of step with the time in which he lived, the
anomaly was based on his choice to continue as a poet despite the public's lack of acceptance of his poetry. He objected, also, to the
ideology of materialism and was not alone in criticizing the age. In "Miniver Cheevy" three aspects of nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury American culture, as analyzed by T. J. Jackson Lears, resonate: materialism, which with its components of work, action, and
acquisition formed the ethos of the age and the measure of progress; militarism, a manifestation of the effort to overcome the ennui of
the age and what was perceived as the feminization of American culture in the latter nineteenth century; and antimodernism, an

expression of the desire to escape the material-spiritual dilemmas that persisted and an effort to retrieve, if only in the imagination,
the glories and principles of an earlier time. Clearly, the three are inter-related and all find satirical rendering in Robinsons poem.
Materialism is the root cause of the manifestations of militarism and antimodernism, and although Miniver hardly can be called a man
of the hour in terms of acquisition, he places himself with his more successful countrymen in the one respect that he "scorned the gold
he sought." For while accumulating wealth the bourgeoisie of the age also "scorned" it in the sense that they needed to create a
Spartan image to offset the ennui that their wealth brought. But Robinson rotates this image, for although Miniver may wish for wealth
(even while, ostensibly, scorning it), he does no more than wish, or dream (and the scorn, as well, is a dream); he is a negation of the
work ethic that culminates in riches. His ostensible search for gold is mere delusion, and his "rest . . . from his labors" merely a rest
from dreaming. Yet he is no more the poser than were the bourgeoisie or real life, for it is questionable whether the work ethic was a
moral stance or simply a lust for gold. There is a tie, paradoxically, between Miniver Cheevy and society in the self-delusion of both.
It is with antimodernism as manifested in much of the writing of the period, however, that Robinson would particularly quarrel and
against which the satire of "Miniver Cheevy" has its greatest force.
. . . When Robinson himself later turned to medieval legend, it was not as escape from reality but as study of human behavior and the
human dilemma and as an indictment of war and the claims of empire. Although Miniver Cheevy has been flattered by "false dreams"
of splendor in the past, his creator recognized the "simple sad-color" of life past and present and the debauchery of art in his own time.
Howells adds in his essay that while the new romance "addresses mostly a crude and ignorant audience, . . . some better informed
person may overhear. . . ." Robinson overheard.
In "Miniver Cheevy" his choice of medieval knights-in-armor as the focus of Miniver's dreams most firmly connects the poem with
modern romance literature, but the structure and diction as well as the imagery all point to a comment on contemporary society and
its literature underlying the more apparent satire of himself. Sketching a physical description and Miniver's attitude and problem, the
first stanza may be said to be external. The next five stanzas then dwell mostly within Miniver's ruminations on a more glorious past
before the poem moves outward again in its conclusion. While the first stanza thus sets the scene and introduces the character, it is
chiefly in these inner stanzas that the double meaningthe two-edged satiric bladeis wrought.
The neatly juxtaposed and sharply contrasting images and diction of the first and second stanzas point up Miniver's problem and his
temporary escape from his everyday misery:
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.
Although his finer tastes run to the classics, Miniver has been infected by his literary surroundings. And while real life is a cause for
weeping, romance is a cause for dancing. The very ludicrousness of the latter image not only sharpens the satire but, significant to the
underlying theme, heightens the sense of contrast between the real and the unreal. Miniver's escape into Romance parallels that of the
contemporary reader.
But ideas of weeping and dancing play back and forth, for Miniver is aware that those days of old and all they heldhe believesof
dash and glory have been lost in modern times, and in the fourth stanza we learn the "mourned Romance, now on the town, / And Art,
a vagrant." Robinson's use of the "local idiom" takes on deeper satirical coloring, how ever, by the fact of fictional romances
overrunning the market, feeding Miniver's dreams and a tasteless reading public. Robinson's placing of the reference to art in the last
line of the stanza reinforces the satire. Its position and brevityit is the only specific note on artrelegates his character's mourning
for art to little more than a passing thought. Miniver's concentration, like that of contemporary society in its escape from real life, is on
knights in shining armor, as the return to that image two stanzas later shows. Robinson's is on art. Although he may parallel Miniver in
having been "born too late," it is for an age when literature, not knighthood, was in flower that the poet yearned. Robinson's literary
integrity that insisted on realism in all its colors has been noted. Similarly, he had few illusions about the past. His greatest stroke of
satire in "Miniver Cheevy" is thus his devastation, by his allusion to the Medici, of the notion that the past was all glory and honor:
Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.
The stanza is the more humorously, satirically striking for its having been replaced immediately after the reference to art. The vagrant
art is in fact the modern romance that wanders so far from truth. And Miniver Cheevy, so similar on the surface of the poem to his
creator, paradoxically is symbolic of the society hypnotized into forgetting or ignoring the evils of the pastor the present, for that
matter. There is no didacticism in the stanza, of course, the diction keeping the Medici reference on the satirical plane and Miniver on
the ridiculous. The opposition of "loved" and "sinned," the juxtaposition of the rather lofty-sounding word, "Albeit," with the absurd idea
that follows, the ingenious inclusion of the one four-syllable word, "incessantly," among two lines otherwise containing all singlesyllable words, and the images and references suggested by the stanza cause it to vibrate in two satirical directions, one enlarging the
picture of a humorously pathetic character, the other destroying the image of a glorious past.
An equally absurd idea, in the next stanza, is that of armor being graceful:
Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval grace
Of iron clothing.
More significant is Robinson's graceful motion back toward the present through the image of the khaki suit, emblematic of modern
American militarism. The poet continues with images of the present in the penultimate stanza with its allusions to the lust for gold. In
fact, three strategically placed words, labors, khaki, and gold in the third, fifth, and sixth stanzas, respectively, keep important aspects
of the present before the reader even while most of the allusions are to the past. In the final stanza the imagery of the poem is drawn
from the real world, with a clear picture of Miniver sitting in a barroom, scratching his head, coughing, and drinking. These final images
contrast not only with the visions of the romantic past but also with the description of the current era's typical American: vigorous and
active, progressive and financially successful. Miniver is here again the caricature of the poet (whose sense of humor and self-irony
helped rescue him, however, from his demon) sunk in drink and in the inertia of thoughtanathema to this age of action. But in
Robinson's deeper-cutting satire not only Miniver the drunkard, but the age, is degenerate: in its materialism and, most offensive to
Robinson and other serious writers, in its literary taste.
Robinson's central concern in the visions of romance he gives to Miniver is the shallowness of a large amount of the published verse
and fiction that1eaves "art a vagrant." His method in poetry often was "simply to present his story, leaving the application to his
reader, ending a poem, however, in a manner that may prompt reflection." Because "Miniver Cheevy" is so easily perceived as simply
self-ridicule, the further reflection that Robinson's poetry usually demands may seem unnecessary. But white an easy poem may now
and then be granted this complex and often obscure poet, "Miniver Cheevy" functions at the deeper level as well. This poem, popular
and enjoyable in any reading, thus warrants reflection, after all, and by the demands and rewards of reflection proves the richer. And at
a time when America loved vigor but produced (with notable exceptions) an anemic literature, a final irony, in retrospect, is that the
ingenious double satire of "Miniver Cheevy" proves Robinson's own vigor, a vigor not physical, but artistic.
from "The Double-Edged Irony of E. A. Robinson's 'Miniver Cheevy.'" Colby Library Quarterly 22.3 (Sept. 1986).
David H. Burton

In no poem in The Town Down The River was the problem of the artist more sharply etched than in the popular "Miniver Cheevy."
Miniver Cheevy was drawn to the past as he dreamed of Thebes and Camelot. He disliked the present, cursing the commonplace. But
the crux of his difficulty was that he "scorned the gold he sought/ But sore annoyed was he without it." This was a succinct rendering of
the dynamic which motivated much of Robinson's commentary on mankind's search for happiness.
from Edwin Arlington Robinson: Stages in a New England Poet's Search. Edwin Mellen Press, 1987. Copyright 1987 by David H.
Burton.