Your Basic 4-line Stanza with ABAB Rhyme Scheme
Let's face it: the form of "Richard Cory" is pretty basic. The poem is made up of four-line stanzas, and each of those stanzas has an ABAB rhyme scheme. That means that the first and third lines of each stanza rhyme, as do the second and fourth lines (each letter represents that line's end rhyme). For example, in the first stanza, "town" and "crown" rhyme, as do "him" and "slim". These rhymes are actually super-regular; our pal Robinson never changes things up.
Also pretty regular is the meter of the poem. "Richard Cory" is written in our old friend iambic pentameter, which should be familiar to you if you've ever come across anything by Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. Here's the skinny on how iambic pentameter works:
An iamb is a metrical foot that consists of two syllables: one unstressed syllable, followed by one stressed syllable. So it sounds like this: daDUM. And "penta-" means five. So, iambic pentameter really just means a string of five iambs in a row. Line those babies up, and they sound like "daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM."
"Richard Cory" is super-committed to iambic pentameter. Just check out the first line: "Whenever Richard Cory went down town." Hear all those "daDUMs" in a row (well, five to be exact)? If you read the poem out loud, you'll hear those beats all the way through.
For a lot of poets, things start getting interesting when the poet plays around with the form—perhaps throwing in some slant rhymes, or varying up the meter. But Robinson was all about keeping things regular-style. Why, you might ask? Well, we think it's for dramatic effect. The poem just continues on its regular way for fourteen lines. We get lulled into complacency. We're just chillin', hearing all this great stuff about this great dude Richard Cory. And then:
BAM. The guy kills himself.
We did not see this coming. And a big reason we didn't anticipate the ending was the regularity of the rhyme scheme and meter. They really help create the absolute shock that we feel at the end of the poem.