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