Another New World Lyrics

Lyric discussion by matthewconte 

Cover art for Another New World lyrics by Josh Ritter

These are the lyrics that are on the final cut of the album:

The leading lights of the age all wondered amongst themselves what I would do next After all that I've found in my travels around the world was there anything left?

"Gentlemen," I said "I've studied the maps and if what I am 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 the way I once had and I saw that they wanted belief So I said "all I got are my guts and my God and I paused, and the Annabel Lee"

Oh the Annabel Lee, I saw their eyes shine, the most beautiful ship in the sea, My Nina, my Pinta, my Santa Maria, my beautiful Annabel Lee

That spring I set sail as a crowd waved from shore and on board the crew waved their hands But I never had family just the Annabel Lee so I didn't have cause to look back

I just set the course north, and I studied the charts and towards dark I drifted towards sleep and I dreamed of the fine deep harbor I'd find past the ice for my Annabel 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

Till at last around us was vastness, one vast glassy desert of arsenic white and the waves that once lifted us sifted instead into drifts against Annabel's sides

And the crew gathered closer at first for comfort But each morning would bring a new set of tracks in the snow leading over the edge of the world till I was the only one left

After that it gets cloudy, but it feels like I laid there for days and maybe for months But Annabel held me the two of us happy just to think back on all we had done

We talked of the other new worlds we discovered till she gave up her body to me And as I chopped up her main sail for timber I told her of all that we still had to see

Then the frost turned her moorings to nine tails and the wind lashed her sides in the cold I burned her to keep me alive every night in the loving embrace of her hold

And I won't call it rescue what brought me back to the old world to drink and decline And pretend that the search for another new world was well worth the burning of mine

Sometimes at night in my dreams comes the singing of some unknown tropical bird and I smile in my sleep thinking Annabel Lee had made it to Another New World

Yeah sometimes at night in my dreams comes the singing of some unknown tropical  bird And I smile in my sleep thinking Annabel Lee has made it to Another New World