Between a blurred sagacity
   That once had power to sound him,
And Love, that will not let him be
   The Judas² that she found him,
Her pride assuages her almost
   As if it were alone the cost--
He sees that he will not be lost,
   And waits, and looks around him.

A sense of ocean and old trees
   Envelops and allures him;
Tradition, touching all he sees,
   Beguiles and reassures him.
And all her doubts of what he says
   Are dimmed by what she knows of days,
Till even Prejudice delays
   And fades, and she secures him.

The falling leaf inaugurates
   The reign of her confusion;
The pounding wave reverberates
   The dirge of her illusion.
And Home, where passion lived and died,
   Becomes a place where she can hide,
While all the town and harbor side
   Vibrate with her seclusion.

We tell you, tapping on our brows,
   The story as it should be,
As if the story of a house
   Were told, or ever could be.
We'll have no kindly veil between
   Her visions and those we have seen--
As if we guessed what hers have been,
   Or what they are or would be.

Meanwhile we do no harm, for they
   That with a god have striven,
Not hearing much of what we say,
   Take what the god has given.
Though like waves breaking it may be,
   Or like a changed familiar tree,
Or like a stairway to the sea,
   Where down the blind are driven.

--
¹Love the Tyrant.  The ancient author Apollonius called it "Love the Destroyer."
²The disciple who betrayed Christ.

The idea of love as a tyrant goes back to the earliest Greek literature.

In Hesiod's Theogony, for example, we find the following evaluation of Love:

In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next
wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the
deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus,
and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth,
and Eros ( Love), fairest among the deathless gods,                     [120]
who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind
and wise counsels of all gods and all men within their hearts.

The woman in this story is in love with a man who does not deserve her love.  He betrays her, yet she cannot overcome her love for him.  Love overrules her reason, "blurs" her "sagacity," "overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all god and all men [and women] in their hearts."

• Stanza 1: Notice that the last line is chopped. The shortness adds to the humor of the poem. Miniver had reasons to regret that he was born.
• Stanza 2: Cheevy liked the glorious days of gone by. He lived in the past.
• Stanza 3: The myth of Seven Heroes against Thebes (in Greece) led to the Seven Samauri story in Japan, which led in turn to the western "Magnificent Seven". This included Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Creon, Tyresius the blind pophet, and others.
• Priam’s neighbor’s refers to the Trojan War between Greece and Troy which included the likes of Helon of Troy, Agamimnon, and Achilles.
• Camelot was the kingdom of King Arthur, Gwenevere, Sir Lancelot, and the other Knights of the Round Table.
• Miniver construed all of this in his mind. He is a romantic living in the past.
• Stanza 4: This stanza refers to the fact that art is a vagrant, and is wandering about. Miniver is lazy. He drinks, rests, and loafs around. There is no time in history when Miniver Cheevy would have been head and shoulders above the crowd.
• Some say the present is more glorious than the past because of technological advances in such fields as medicine and engineering.
• Stanza 5: The Medici were a family during the Renaissance period known for their wealth and the beauty of the art they created.  They were also known for their ruthlessness & viciousness.  Miniver would like to sin a lot by being one of them.
• Stanza 6: Miniver wanted a suit of armor to clank around in.
• Stanza 7: Miniver scorned gold, which is what he really wanted. However, Miniver is lazy, and it requires much work to gain gold.
• Stanza 8: This stanza states that it will not be any good coming from old Miniver.

There are two central questions one must ask about Richard Cory:

1. What is different about Richard Cory? and
2. Why does everyone look up to him?

1. He is rich. That is the most important thing in American society. The rich believe they are superior than most people. Some of the less wealthier people feel that they are inferior to the rich. That is why some people like TV shows like "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous".
2. He is slim, good looking, and young. There is an old saying about this. "Can’t be too rich nor too thin."
3. He’s nice. He’s a gentleman.He could be all these and just be another "frat brat". He could have been obnoxious, but instead he was nice.

Stanza 1: He has clean cut American looks. When he comes into town everyone gathers to gauk.

Stanza 2: There is adifference between old and new money. Old money means knowing how to spend it tastefully. New money means buying the big Cadillac from Texas with big longhorns on the front and a horn that plays "Yellow Rose of Texas."

Stanza 3: Richard Cory is like Prince William is today. Hes tall, nice looking, and incredibly wealthy, yet he is very eloquent and well educated. He knows how to act.

Stanza 4: The people went without meat because they were poor. This was a time of robber barrons (1896). This was when just a few people had large amounts of wealth and the masses were impoverished. We are returning to that today in our country. In 1980, the top 1% of the American population controlled about 20% of the wealth, now it’s 50%. 99% of the American population has to divide up the other 50%.

Richard Cory was not happy. If externals could make someone happy, Cory would have been happy. He had money, looks, popularity, charm, grace, etc., yet he was miserable.