Robinson turns an old grief into something wry and unsentimental. The speaker pictures Time as a mocking jester who brushes aside human prayers, tears, and questions while friends drift out of life. Life keeps burning and resisting age, but the one thing that survives is love—and even love here means buying shrouds, because everyone we care about must eventually go. People keep yearning after what flees; every face, however new, is already dimming toward dust and searching for the next friend who will also pass. The tone is weary, ironic, and quietly tender rather than angry. The final stanza admits the truth we avoid: death alone will stop the endless mourning for friends that come and go. The mood is melancholic but controlled, like a sigh caught between resignation and affection.
Ballade of Dead Friends — Summary
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. And thus we all are nighing The truth we fear to know: Death will end our crying For friends that come and go.