Tone is defined as the attitude and feelings of the author toward his or her subject or a character. Because this poem is written from the persective of a narrator, who is presumably one of the townsfolk, his attiude and feelings will be the basis for my commentary. Throughout the poem he refers to Richard Cory as someone who was admired by all "we people on the pavement looked at him" "clean favored and imperially slim", and "fluttered pulses when he said" all suggest the Cory had an aurora about him that all people coveted. The compliments and admiration continue in stanzas 2 and 3 "admirably schooled in every grace" "we hought that he was everything" "(we wished) we were in his place" This attitude even manifests itself directly in the first and second lines of the forth stanza. "So on we worked and waited for the light and went...