When I’m not facing the face that I fancy,
I fancy the face I face.

The couplet plays on the double meaning of “face” (a literal visage and the situation one confronts) and “fancy” (to desire and to imagine). It suggests a strategy of emotional resilience: when one cannot be with the person one longs for (“the face that I fancy”), one chooses to cultivate affection or acceptance for what is actually present (“the face I face”). The wit lies in its tongue-twister structure, turning a potentially melancholy sentiment—absence, compromise, or unfulfilled desire—into a jaunty, self-encouraging maxim. In Harburg’s lyric idiom, the line reads like a compact philosophy of making-do without surrendering to bitterness.