Constantinople

Constantinople is the original name of Istanbul, the capital of Turkey. It comes from Constantine, the name of its king back in the ancient times. So this is obviously a place from the past. Now what’s left of this place is slowly withering away. So answers the phrase ‘all the leaves fall off the oak’. Now that is symbolically capturing all beautiful things that wither away from the past. Like ‘all the sheep follow the spoken word’ that means that people follow everything now, and that’s how it all withered. It’s saying that the past was a much more free place. Constantinople is not the place this guy escaping to. Constantinople is something that was and is nevermore. That’s what the city is symbolizing the past. The phrase ‘all my friends are with you’ is saying that all his friends are there in the hopefully in the past, the place he is escaping to. So pretty much he’s trying to escape from the present to the past, to what once was. And he’s escaping to a place that doesn’t exist. It’s kind of sad if you look at it from that angle. The other angle, which is similar is him bringing up past. Making the past the present. That angle may not be more happy, but certainly more motivational