Songs of Fairly Utter Despair II — Summary

A restless speaker announces that he wants to escape by ship, but he cannot name a destination. He runs through a list of far-flung places—Paris, London, Rome, Nagasaki, Naples, Nome, Honolulu, Teheran, Servia, Afghanistan—only to say that none of them is the place he means. The longing is real, but it has no object; he simply wants to “give the place I’m in the slip.” The final couplet turns that frustration into a half-comic appeal: “Lord, tell me where I want to go; / Give a man a decent show!” The mood is playful despair, or maybe despairing play. There is real restlessness underneath, but it is handled with wit and exaggeration rather than gloom. The speaker is like someone packing for a trip he cannot imagine, hoping that the right destination will somehow be handed to him.