Another New World

The leading light of the age all wondered amongst
 Themselves what I would do next
 After all that I'd found in my travels around
 The world was there anything else left?
 "Gentlemen", I said, "I've studied the maps"
 "And if what I'm thinking is right"
 "There's another new world at the top of the world"
 "For whoever can break through the ice"
 I looked round the room in that way I once had
 And I saw that they wanted belief
 So I said "All I've got are my guts and my God"
 Then I paused,"and the Annabelle Lee"
 Oh the Annabelle Lee, I saw their eyes shine
 The most beautiful ship in the sea
 My Nina, My Pinta, My Santa Maria
 My beautiful Annabelle Lee
 That spring we set sail as the crows waved from shore
 And on board the crew waved their hats
 But I never had family just the Annabelle Lee
 So I didn't have cause to look back
 I just set the course north and I studied the charts
 And toward dark I drifted toward sleep
 And I dreamed of the fine deep harbor I'd find
 Past the ice for my Annabelle Lee
 After that it got colder the world got quiet
 It was never quite day or quite night
 And the sea turned the color of sky turned the color
 Of sea turned the color of ice
 'Til at last all around us was fastness
 One vast glassy desert of arsenic white
 And the waves that once lifted us
 Sifted instead into drifts against Annabelle's sides
 The crew gathered closer at first for the comfort
 But each morning would bring a new set
 Of the tracks in the snow leading over the edge
 Of the world 'til I was the only one left
 After that it gets cloudy but it feels like I lay there
 For days maybe for months
 But Annabelle held me the two of us happy
 Just to think back on all we had done
 We talked of the other worlds we'd discover
 As she gave up her body to me
 And as I chopped up her mainsail for timber
 I told her of all that we still had to see
 As the frost turned her moorings to nine-tail
 And the wind lashed her sides in the cold
 I burned her to keep me alive every night
 In the lover's embrace of her hold
 I won't call it rescue what brought me here back to
 The old world to drink and decline
 And to pretend that the search for another new world
 Was well-worth the burning of mine
 But sometimes at night in my dreams comes the singing
 Of some known tropical bird
 And I smile in my sleep thinking Annabelle Lee
 Has finally made it to another new world