The speaker is caught in a small paradox: they want to travel to several places, but not to keep moving. What they want is to arrive and be still. The title, "Quest," suggests a search, yet the thing being searched for seems less like a destination than a particular feeling of settledness that could happen anywhere.
The third and fourth lines hint at how that might work. On "another shore," the speaker imagines finding "the same white ringing," a sound or sensation that stays constant from place to place. It might be surf, light, or a bell, though the poem never says. The closing comparison is odd and a little bitter: this sameness is like "a cheap joy" or "tallow for the king of absence." Tallow is humble candle fat, so the offering is modest, even makeshift. The mood is quiet and yearning, with a faint sadness, as if the speaker knows that what they long for is simple and also a kind of emptiness.