The Ballad of a Dead Friend

As we the withered ferns
By the roadway lying,
Time, the jester, spurns
All our prayers and prying —
All our tears and sighing,
Sorrow, change, and woe —
All our where-and-whying
For friends that come and go.

Life awakes and burns,
Age and death defying,
Till at last it learns
All but Love is dying;
Love’s the trade we’re plying,
God has willed it so;
Shrouds are what we’re buying
For friends that come and go.

Man forever yearns
For the thing that’s flying.
Everywhere he turns,
Men to dust are drying, —
Dust that wanders, eying
(With eyes that hardly glow)
New faces, dimly spying
For friends that come and go.

ENVOI

And thus we all are nighing
The truth we fear to know:
Death will end our crying
For friends that come and go.

              – Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935)

• Written by Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), an American poet
• ballad = narrative poem in quatrains of rhyming scheme abab
• ballade = narrative poem in three octaves (8 lines) of the same rhyming scheme and an envoi of 4 lines.
• The ultimate fate of life is death; the mortality/impermanence of a man cannot be prevented no matter how much we cry and pray, or defy death. As the time passes, a child ages, becomes old and finally dies one day.
• No friend stays with us forever – death ultimately separates even two best friends.
• Time is like a jester that only plays with (or makes fun of) our emotions. It rejects all our tears and prayers, and no matter what, finally takes our friends away from us.
• Man is always desiring for the transient (short-lived) things. Nothing in this world is permanent. Wherever he turns, he finds things decaying and dying. Death is the ultimate truth.
• Everything dies except one thing; that one thing is ‘love’. Even when a person is already dead and gone, love for him stays with his friends. But that love, too, dies ultimately when his friends also die.
• There is difference between ballad and ballade. Unlike ballad, ballade is a poem of more fixed form. The ballade contains three main stanzas, each having eight lines and the same rhyme scheme, plus a shorter concluding stanza, called envoi, of four lines. All four stanzas have the same final refrain lines.
• This poem is actually a ballade, though it is written ‘ballad’ in the title. It has three octaves with the rhyme scheme ababbcbc and an envoi of four lines with the rhyme scheme abab. It also has the refrain ‘For friends that come and go.’

GLOSSARY

withered (adj): dried up and dead
jester (n): a man who tells jokes to amuse people
spurn (v): to reject or refuse in a proud way
pry (v): to try to find out about other people’s private lives in a way that is annoying and rude
woe (n): trouble and problem
ply (v): to travel regularly along a particular route or between two particular places
shroud (n): a piece of cloth that a dead person’s body is wrapped in before it is buried
yearn (v): to want something very much specially when it is difficult to get