A Bruise Upon The Silent Moon lyrics - Cradle of Filth

"And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep..."

The Promise Of Fever lyrics - Cradle of Filth

In the beginning
Rimmed with wind and storm
A great black wrath of infinite math
Spat snarling into form
And there was Heaven
Lit up with precious stones
Each one could fall but for the rule
Of Faith and love and stronger thrones

And therein rose vast wonders
Affections to be seen
Fathered from the plundered
Reflections of a dream

Fogging into nightmare
For him whose place was set
With wayward stars that absent, marred
All creation with their theft

In the beginning
Bewinged and ringed with dawn
This favoured Avatar, enthralled
Swansongs from those that thronged this shore
With Gabriel and Michael
He shone with fierce intent
For loyalty, their joy to see
Him spur the hymns to heaven (sent)

For sculptured lips of seraphim
Whom fate then cruelly rent
(With sleight-fingered strains of harmony)
Each note to grim portent

As grinning nimbus gathered
Over spires arabesque
For Him that blazed with holy praise
That for a jealous God was meant

Shining Feriluce
Lustrous scourge of fallen spirits
Basked in glory, flew
To lakes in sacred altitudes

Sweet haunting music swathed the breeze
With curling tongues that lapped the lead
As through thick mountain mist
he wandered cursed (with thoughts adrift)
Until at last, past grasping trees

He paused to draught forbidden streams
That whispered siren promises
To drown his thirst (for sports amiss)

These waters held secrets
Like raped Russian dolls
Wherein evil and good
Tore his soul for control

And drunk with the verse of desire's first words
The weight of the universe
Slunk in rehearsed

Horror in numbers too great to discern
The rotting of worlds to the conqueror worm
And love a rare orchid so fragile in bloom
Espied gasping breath under dark-sheeted moons

Shining Feriluce
Reflected in a jaded mirror
Climbing from the noose
Of time in divine servitude

And thus a strange new melody
Of will and wanton fantasies
Whetted by the veiled, seen
Danced from his ashen lips
In red dawn scores, the silver scream
Of truth and her deleted scenes
Was taken up as far, it seemed
As God his words eclipsed

(Those waters hid visions
Like butchers in war
Perverting the course
Of life's blood evermore...)
In the beginning
Skinned well with gibbous tones
Of countenance and ignorance
In equal measures sewn
A marbled arc of Angels
Sworn to the morning star
Shared His pride and deep inside
Felt Chill Shadows sweep their cards

Hurt And Virtue lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Distant vistas
Swathed in the haze
Of the reddening sunset
Fell to whispers
'Neath stars that marred descending skies

From the cusp of midnight mountains
Wending as a mist
Rebels truced with Feriluce
(In truth, few could resist)
Came praising his hellraising through
The sparse and marble clime
Where Virtue bathed, their ravings made
Her fountains flood with wine

Lifted with the gift
Of their dark seductive songs
She drifted from the path
She was surely set upon

Courting chaos
Prized in sight
Of the covering angel
Taught in ways of
Smothering another lover
Other than God

Worshipped in each other's arms
Like spider eidolons
The moon conducted like a charm
Those strange attachments on
And this is how they came to be
Dragged before the throne
Through tongues that hung whilst theirs were run
On soft white throats and punctured moans

Though fated now than later
By his tutor that had been
He baited the Creator
With the future he had seen

Of Michael, psyched with jealousies
A reich right by His side
And worming Man about to be
The apple of His eye

His children lost to free will
And the cost of beaten hearts
Like the night 'twixt vice and Virtue
When Her kiss became a scar

Seraph enemies
Why has my lord forsaken my judgment
Am I not free as He to indulge my darkest fantasies?

From embittered lips
These words were slathered
Split with the whips
Of their witch hunt gathered

He sought Her grave
Midst drowning crowds that howled in rage...
Blasphemer!
Blasphemer!
Though she was gone
Not lyriced to the song of their spirited throng
But ghosted back where she belong...

A grace embracing Michael
In a lace of tears that bleared his pride
He swallowed
Blood followed
Though with spit for all things divine
Though with spit for all things so fucking blind

His seal He tore
And to the floor
He threw this tie to heaven
Signifying holy war

And watchful of this sign
A thousand flames, unauthorised
Left celestial posts
To coalesce and, unified
Return their fallen leader
As he turned one final time
And threw a glance
Like a downward lance
That stung like guilt in every mind

An Enemy Led The Tempest lyrics - Cradle of Filth

As pride precedes the downfall
So he took His place before the firewall
Of dissonant choirs whose faith in one
Was embraced in this wraith whose fate was hung

Between forgiveness and the damage done

An electric scent over drear decay
Lent a violent surge to their serenades
Through white glades as His winged parade
Bent to silhouette and to sharpen dull razors

Within vast skies unversed in starkness
His might grew
And blew light hues to grey...
And worse, a third of stars to darkness

Then thunder seethed
And wreathed in thickening night
A line was drawn midst wrong and right
And across the throat of thieves

As love fell choked, the tempest broke
From Heaven's farthest shore
Descending to eclipse all hope
Repentance might stay holy war

He would not heel nor fake a bow
Murmur curses to the wind
Enraged, he raved in balrog howls
Upon a storm firstborn of sin

Incensed anew, rebellious tore
Like frenzied beasts of prey
Through temple doors...
Thrown east before the midnight masses

And where once bliss reigned so serene
In sweeter glades
Now veins ran openly...
Like eyes that shed from kindred ashes

When suddenly
There shone a hideous light
And a voice like three insanities
Soared up in thistled speech

"Thou hast bred hate where there dwelt none
And for this grave mistake
How thou art fallen Morning Sun
The proud will be abased"

He would not heel nor fake a bow
Murmur curses to the wind
And lo, the wrath of god swept down...

"Thou art no more an angel filled
With light, but a leech to be abhorred
And thou shalt suffer My burning will"...
Quoth this raven: "Nevermore"

Never fucking more

And with these words like heavy stone
Cast against that gilded throne
With many legions still in tow
He turned his wings to flee
His eyes a picture of distaste
Drawn to tears and in their place
The dawn of time and fates to face
Through all eternity...

I wept for him a deep red river
That ran like blood through scarred ravines
To sluice away the guilt that slithered
Like a serpent tongue to Eve
For once as I, in heaven climbed
Too high for truth to truly see
My sunken mind, drunken and blind
Saw the lie: The fool was Me...

Alone and cold, face to the crack
Beyond the dark gates with no way back
His crown of gold faded to black
Like a bruise upon the heart that lingers

With thrill-kill culture shock wave lengths
Of rope to hang high
Ten commandments by...
Snaked about his upraised fingers

Damned In Any Language (A Plague On Words) lyrics - Cradle of Filth

"And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon, and the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not. Neither was their place found anymore in Heaven. And the Great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil and Satan which deceiveth the whole world, he was cast out into the Earth and his angels were cast out with him."
[Revelations 12:7-9]

Better To Reign In Hell lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Better to reign in hell
Better to reign in hell

Heart in hand passed clasp of pain
In dark lowland that set bad blood in veins
Burning, like penal fires roused to strain
The jagged-toothed skyline braced with crosses

The golden dawn
Lay lost to mist where
Emboldened thorns
Made their bed with toppled stones

He closed His eyes
Sunken to dream there
Of crow-black skies
And a great white empty throne
Horror stalked the bilious fogs
That balked his visions

He licked the spittle from the cheeks of the wry
And drifted back to when His stung its target
The sneer of Michael on a glorious high
Of angel dust and Virtue by his side

Drowning in the past
That downfall seemed like yesterday
Though blurred moons passed
As enemies in high places laughed

Moved to mirrors cracked with heavy lines
He rose snowblind, through shifting sands of time
Erased the trace and taste of bitter wines
The grapes of wrath grew fat on the vine

She came to Him
A little whip of tantrums
Thrashed on velvet skins
That lines Her wishbone Henge

Her name was Sin
A warming spurt of mantras
Splashed on occult tongues
That whispered sweet revenge

For the shame of their crawl from grace
Cold and hollow as the grave

And for a rape and ruinous scourge
Spared for souls that shared God's worship
For now their throats coated notes with dirge
That poured from parapets to the pits below

Drowning in the past
A wretched scream like yesterday
Died at last
With the rising of the revenant dark

All sharpened claws and blunt discharge

"I shall bow no more to the dogs of the Lord
Tearing at my carcass heart
I shall fall to my knees only at the keyholes
Of Virtue slipping into bondage masks...
Freewill made me better to reign in hell"

And with new wings
Unfurled and spoken
He took to things
That would desecrate the world

The seduction of both woman and man
For a bastard masterplan

Drowning out the past
Fool Fates unwound cruel yesterdays
beneath the stars
That staggered from the blast

Serpent Tongue lyrics - Cradle of Filth

[Part 1]

So adept was unspoken Man
At dusting ledgers of the seraphim
That Lilith swept across the broken land
In a whirl of lust to pleasure him

This bland Adam, a reaper of the sun
In bone dry season, for Eve was busy sucking thumbs
Pricked in rosy gardens as he spattered into shells
And ran with morning fauna; His mastiffs and gazelle

Breathless as the wind
Adam, prowled, fell foul to Sin
But not before She spread Her grin
Across His silent lips
At crack of day, though what was shame?
The raptor's nest wherein they lay
Bore witness to Her soft parade
Of fingers come to grips

His undivine attention won
She deftly spun
From 'neath His thrusts to writhe above
In ecstasy
Pendulous She swung
As if her limbs imbibed His tongue
To spill, as with His rod
The secret name of God

But no seed passed those fruitful lips
(Serpent Tongue)
For fearing Her who grasped, He slit
(Serpent Tongue)
Her throat from ear to where She fled
(Serpent Tongue)
With tail and blood between Her legsss...

[Part II]

So very kept was the virgin hand
That brushed the treasures of Utopia
And how the greed swept across the desert sands
In late August just to measure Her

This hallowed Eve, a creature of the moon
A simple dish born with a silver spoon
Giddy sniffing orchids that opened after dusk
Incubus and Prudence, two such swoon to touch Her

Restless as the skies
Temptation, bloomed, found room to rise
And snatching breaths between Her thighs
He crawled to Eve...
At dead of night, the sticky clime
Smelt perfect to this serpentine
This shining Angel
Palled in mysteries...

Her undivine attention won
He deftly spun
A web of for the one
Great sacred tree
Bejewelled and lit
As if a thousand shades did flit
About boughs of forbidden lore
Hidden for the want of more

And when seeds passed those fruitful lips
And Mankind basked in vast eclipse
A Devil shot of thin disguise
Surmised to better paradise

Carrion lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Lurking in the shade
Of dark and fragrant trees
Shirking from the rage
That tore the heavens free
A vagrant Angel
His with span to see
The garden swell with terrors
To banish man and Eve

Another fall from grace
Whiplashed from the gates
Half-naked and insane
Full-blooded, breasted
Nerve ends tested
To behests of pain

A sombre lot to gain

A storm slid in
Borne by carnal winds
The upper ether thinned
And therein sat abominations

Satan seated there
Savouring the reek of desolation
Their dank despair
Moved His speech to leech the air

"Behold the golden door
To paradise is lost
So praise Me as you raised your Lord
And I shall thaw this gnawing frost"

Another fall from grace
Whiplashed from the gates
Half-naked and insane
And destined for a spiteful Fate
Wherein evil sought the shamed
As pawns in greater stakes
Across this cosmic game
To win the hand
Of darkness and
Set Her in her rightful place

"Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall bring it forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it was thou taken: for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return."
[Genesis 3:17-19]

At the throat of the human race
With claws engorged and poised to rake
With that the pact was sealed
And as creation reeled
Bewitched oration filled
The hearts of all
Who came to crawl
Upon these earthen fields

A sombre lot to till

A wracked black acid song
Spat from the massive throng
Of Seraph knelt along
The deep red welt to domination

The deep red welt to domination

Presents From The Poison-Hearted lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Reigning at the feast of Phantasia
Heightened pleasures were endeavoured to bow
Before My coronation and vocal aspirations
To rule this fool creation fallen 'neath me now

I knew deep eyes
Of a distant Christ
Were scarred from afar under starry lustre

Sighting my recitals on the rites of vice
Perverting Virtue
Enslaving grace
Behind the glittering mask of pride
Saving face finding thorns to pierce His side

Desire, the fire
Spread hell throughout my soul
And higher the wire
The more I sought control

Straining from the leash in exultation
Head to the wind to breathe with ravenous lungs
The global scent of fornication
A writhe of many vipers deciphering tongues

I whispered schemes to dreamers then
To pursue an Eden
That screamed of me supreme again
As my world bloomed
So too the moon
Through Adam to Seth, Enos, Cainan
Mahalaleel and Jared blew
Perverting virtue
Enslaving grace
Behind the slippery guise of lies
Saving face making waves to drown their faith

Messiahs, Pariahs
Aeons reversed the two
This higher, their spires
The more cursed grew their roots
And suffering...

I swept cruel seas
On the galley of the shadow of death

A fist in the cunt of the spread horizon
A kiss for the sun risen red once dines on
The coast of Menses

Discharged from celestial wombs
A first degree murder of ravens
Followed in fugue through the crack of doom

The Goat of Mendes
I set regime
In the galley of the shadow of death...

Angels in raiments
As pure as coal
Taking their payments
In tortured mortal souls
A bold direction
The abyss edge
But on cold reflection
One they warmed to nonetheless

As they preyed the paths of the righteous
Through the myth of thistled orchard floors
Bearing gifts of plenitude, for
The apples of the Lord were rotten to the core

Temptation, my ambassador

Attila, Hesiod, Pharisees and Nero
All begged of Me for more

Down dark steps of history
I waged war with a heaven
I could not see...
Beyond my wildest fantasies

Throwing sixes over deadly sin
I traded whose who played to win
Skin for precious kin...
And that that wormed within

Staining the reams of revelation
Etching ever-afters in accursed verse
The limpid rags of resurrection
From papal parapets were to dirt dispersed
Desire, the flyers
Spread hell throughout their souls
And higher the fire
The more I held control

Doberman Pharaoh lyrics - Cradle of Filth

To and fro, through freeze and thaws
From zenith to nadir
The universal tug of war
Saw lines drawn in the sands appear
Divisions of a promised land
And Hell for those that dwelt
Beneath a Pharaoh's granite hand
Where death wed something else

Millennia swam passed
Since the covened Ark
Ran aground on Ararat...

But anew, tempered shadows grew
Out of Midian, strewing fear
Over verdant lawns, the resurgent storms
Led a desert son to sear

From the palace orchard I espied...
(Where swooning trees and moonless beams vied
For the painted eye of the royal bride
Whose gliding curves were deified)
...beyond Her grace where love would die
Wretched destiny arrive

Back and forth the prophet came
Riddled with a tongue of plagues
That would render might Egypt lame
If the rage of God stayed unassuaged...
I listened with a heavy heart
But unveiled to the threats
This Hebrew in a jackal's mask
Would dredge into effect

Thenceforth the Nile reddened
s if Set stretched His hand
To beset the damned

And bruised with flies
The skies grew leadened

But these miracles, feared
Were all but reared
By nature, whose law alone
Stood that revered

This hysteria passed, but still the mark
Of Yahveh burned on in the dark

One final time, on the steps to the shrine
Of Thoth, I twined with fate
"Let my people go"
"Still my word is no"
"Then Death shall be the deciding plague"

Since the crimes divine I left behind
I'd warred with every tribe that plied
In holy vestament, but with time
Bored sore of clawing what was mine
I laid my bones and made my throne
With a view to paradise

Thenceforth the heavens deafened
As if great beasts
Were unleashed to feast on man

And with carrion span
Michael was weaponed

To descend with scorn
A dark reform
Through Pi-Ramses
Skinning mine and Her firstborn

Thus suspiria passed each sacred mark
Of Yahveh, bleeding in the dark

With nauseous dawn, a cry, forlorn
Unified from plazas deep
The prophet's curse
Far worse had worked
To wrest the war in me from sleep

Drowned in light, a downward light
Bathed the snaking exodus
Through the wilderness
As the Aeons crept
Impressed with fresh bloodlust

Babalon A.D. (So Glad For The Madness) lyrics - Cradle of Filth

I bled on a pivotal stretch
Like a clockwork Christ
Bears sore stigmata, bored

And as I threw Job, I drove
Myself to a martyred wretch
To see if I drew pity
Or pretty litanies from the Lord

So the plot sickened
With the coming of days
Ill millennia thickened
With the claret I sprayed
And though they saw red
I left a dirty white stain
A splintered know in the grain
On Eden's marital aid

So glad for the madness

I walked the walls naked to the moon
In Sodom and Babylon
And through rich whores and corridors
Of the Vatican
I led a sordid Borgia on

I read the Urilia text
So that mortals wormed
As livebait for the dead

And as I broke hope, I choked
Another pope with manna peel
Dictating to DeSade
In the dark entrails of the Bastille
And as he wrote, I smote
A royal blow to the heads of France
And in the sheen of guillotines
I saw others, fallen, dance

I was an incurable
Necromantic old fool
A phagadaena that crawled
Drooling over the past
A rabid wolf in shawl
A razor's edge to the rule
That the stars overall
Were never destined to last

So glad for the madness

I furnaced dreams, a poet, for of sleep
Turning sermons with the smell
On Witchfinder fingers
Where bad memories lingered
Burning, as when Dante
Was freed to map Hell

I sired schemes and the means
To catch sight of the seams
And the vagaries inbetween...

And midst the lips and the curls
Of this cunt of a world
In glimpses I would see
A nymph with eyes for me

Eyes of fire that set all life aflame
Lights that surpassed art
In sight, that no intense device of pain
Could prise their secrets from my heart

I knew not her name
Though her kiss was the same
Without a whisper of shame
As either Virtue or Sin's
And pressed to Her curve
I felt my destiny swerve
From damnation reserved
To a permanent grin...

So glad for the madness

Mannequin lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Burning flesh,
Dripping sweat,
Using them all,
like the paralyzing snake,
Charmed and enchanted by the babylon whore.

Led to other worlds
By the girls she curled within
I took their skins to see Her
Be my mannequin

Be my mannequin

I cannot remember
How it was that we first met
Curve of moon and haunted shore
The stars were not those Heaven sent

Did we come together
At masked palatial Balls
In silks and flesh and leather
Or did we come at all?
I dreamt a midnight castle
The eerie song of wolves
And eyes that danced with fire
As they have forever more

Our rites of sin
Have long fathered a hymn
To burden Him
Whom by slip of after whim
At genesis
Dressed Her like the wind
In Autumn gowns
That pinned Her down
To be my mannequin

Be my mannequin

Always poised on winter
But never would She break
My lovecraft and black witch heart
That pounded in Her wake

We kissed on distant balconies
A law unto Her own
Thirteenth dark commandment
Of figures pressed to stone
Turning cream with fantasies
That God alone would know
We graced vomitorium
With the sweet excess of Rome

Flagrant in the past
Our names were deeply carved
On the tree of life in long dead languages

Led to other worlds
By the girls she curled within
I took their skins to see Her
Be my mannequin

Be my mannequin

I tongued the nuns at Louviers
But not one word possessed
Her divine right, an archetype
For mortal Goddesses...

Thank God For The Suffering lyrics - Cradle of Filth

I, I still recall, the first fullmoon of May
'Neath whose rays we lay together
And those bright nights on glassy waves
When we would glide lightly away
From the grain
For wicked flights of pleasure

Those visions fade
Like ghosts to life's parade
Though incisions once made her so vivid
A scarlet whore
With both heels in the door
Of a heaven severed from me, insipid

And midst the writhe of parapets
Where angels sigh, lonely she sits
Upon the lip
Only a slip from whence I beg Her

That I would wish
Her kiss a chrysalis
To break to make my fluttered heart amiss
And in those frozen moments won
From grief that creeps to wreathe the sun
in drapes inwove with deathshead wing
I thank God for the suffering

Love would have conquered all
But for the Rapture
That ancient plan for my defeat
Denied Faith skies that would have set Her free
It seems again dreams wend to capture

Once dancing in a spotlit waltz
Through shadowed dimension
Given to the rivers that bedizened Her eyes
The world drifted by in lost momentum

With no divine intervention

Regardless that the author
Of sin was me and I
Lay chaste of hate in Faith's embrace
As Mortals warred with more besides

They warred with life itself

And in those frozen moments won
From grief that creeps to wreathe the sun
In drapes inwove with deathshead wing
I thank God for the suffering

And I thank God for the suffering
As still I burn
For Her return
I would make my peace with everything

I, I still recall, the first fullmoon of May
Consigned to flames like secret letters
And midst the writhe of parapets
Where angels sigh, lonely she sits
Upon the lip
Only a slip from whence I beg her

That I would wish
Her kiss a chrysalis
To break to make my fluttered heart amiss
And in those frozen moments won
From grief that creeps to wreathe the sun
In drapes inwove with deathshead wing
I thank God for the suffering

Love would have conquered all
Were we not parted
Her splintered loss rekindles rage
The winter frost dwindles across my stage
Lit up once more to score finales started

Love would have conquered all
Love would have conquered...
Hate

The Smoke Of Her Burning lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Earth and sea cower from my screams
As I climb into the skies
Atop sins towered heaven high for me
From whence I see no reason why
I should not smite with vengeance
And hurl thieves down from paradise
For storms before were as nothing more
Than a breeze next to this night

I am Methuselah of the Tribulation
The Moonchild come to harm
A riot of stars shaken from their station

The choking smoke of Jerusalem burning
Six vices become wrath

And though half-blind with ravening
Like Phineus now I see
The end declared from the beginning
Love won through my defeat
But now I fear I will never peer
On Her radiance again
I shall glimpse instead, the slurried red
Of faces pressed to bloodstained panes

Betrayed and played by God
Who alone but He
Scapegraced and goated me?
Now I wish to piss on His parade

Angels, clawed with burnished wings
Still loyal, kiss the seal
Bent on knees and harrowing
Promise overkill

Know that you shall die like whores
And the cries of your writhings shall rise
To please their Lord...
So before the sword
Side with me in slaughter

I am Methuselah of the Tribulation
The Moonchild come to harm
The spoken horns of desolation

Drink the pouring of my fury
Those darkened waters spur
The brink of war as my judge and jury
And rapist executioner
Our time is short, the horsemen ride
A foul-breathed chora howls, besides
Damnation and a day has passed
This divine right to genocide

Weld the gates to heaven shut
The abyss leers in hissing ruts
Unhilt the black grimoire of death
Inscribe all names that God has left

I lived the dream of nymph and men
But now the nightmares come again

Now the nightmares come again...

End Of Daze lyrics - Cradle of Filth


"And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep"

EP: "Bitter Suites To Succubi" (2001)

All Hope In Eclipse lyrics - Cradle of Filth

A thousand nights once succoured Me
In the shadow of misanthropy
Sat gargoyle-limbed amid My licking flame

A cruel tongue at work in Her secret vaults
Sent Rebellion's embers into revolt
The coming of extinction
Synched to whimpers of my name...

Legion I arose, a flood of inhumanity
An acid reign to purify the world
The Asp at Pharaoh's breast
The Atom split under duress
A sniper at the gates of spattered pearl

My heart, torn apart, left a rifled grave...
Save for an unfurled flag of hate
To enthral a mindless zombie race

All heil, all heil, all heil the serpentine's gift
All heil, love fails, all hope lies in eclipse

Black bibles I incribed,
The words "Damnation through design"
Seemed a bitter truth far better for the lie
For as hope was felled by reason
Forlorn became the season
And Death was swift to swallow on the hells of life

Lowered souls, growing cold, tentered easy prey
When heaven's flock, a fair game, dropped
I bored of war with God with greater thrones to claim...

All heil, all heil, all heil the Libertine's wish
All heil, love fails, all hope lies in eclipse

Then between the past and the ravening dark
A sly Messiah came
In the thick of treaty with obligatory greed
She stole the soul hate had sold away

An ancient chill blew down the centuries
That night atonement's eyes
Lit a burning man in Me

When love lay bleeding
And Fates sate feeding
From wounds gored 'neath
Those cherubic wings
She of kindred light
Gladly sacrificed
Eternity
Just to be
With Me

As the moon whose silvered fingers play
On words and dreams too cursed for day
She led my hand to lands I'd not accrued
Where the Faun Dawn bathed Her golden hair
And faith renewed, leaped joyous there
I praised their worth, then planned their conquest too...

All heil, all heil, all heil the serpentine's gift
All heil, love fails, all hope lies in eclipse

All heil, all heil, all heil the Libertine's wish
All heil, love fails, all hope lies in eclipse
...and ignorance is truly bliss.

Born In A Burial Gown lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Sibilant and macabre
Walpurgis sauntered in
Skies litten with five-pointed stars
The work of crafts surpassing sin
As She graced Her window ledge
- An orphaned gypsy nymph
This issue of the forest's bed
Skin flushed with sipped absinthe -
Her eyes revealed, as Brocken's peak
Tried once concealing Hell
A snow white line of divine freaks
In riot, where they fell...

The circus lurches in, a ring of promised delight
For seven days and seven festival nights
What wicked wonders lie within the confines
Of the panther's den

She watches from a maypole, on the rip of Her tongue
The restless spirit of Christmas to come
A Gretel sick of merely sucking Her thumb
Than gingerbread men

Spawned scorned, abhorred by the aerial
She was the light of the world going down
War-torn, forlorn and malarial
She was found
Born in a burial gown

Unloosed, the chain of Her god-given cross
Seduced, now pagan ribbons swathe Her repose
In a carnival of souls sold and similarly lost

Too many decades misfit and mislaid
In innocence, a tender legend of prey
Parades Her second coming, now they're running afraid

Spawned scorned, abhorred by the aerial
She was the light of the world going down
War-torn, forlorn and malarial
She was found
Born in a burial gown

Now She moves with a predator's guile
Beyond the fire-lit circle of life
She soothes your cold heart for a while
Then matches its beat, synching in with a knife
She wrestles Her dreams with a delicate case
Espied by Her cross on the wall
And should She awake, through embrace or mistake
She would take Jesus
Bless foot forward and all...

Sibilant and at last
The circus crawled away
With another lover in its arms
Dancing on Her grave...

Summer Dying Fast lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Through acrid clouds of summer flies
The garden swells with a thousand more wise
Forever flung to celestial dreams
Clawing at the grave of the dead Nazarene

I watch the storm approaching
The darkness calls my name
The trees are growing restless
They feel the season change
Their fruit has putrified
Forbidden once and bound to die
The thread of life lies severed
On the brink of paradise

Grinning winds of hate unfurled
Dash towers tall that grip the sun
Talons stretch her veil
Reclamation, our time has come...

Autumn spreads its golden wings
And lays the path for those unseen
A tangled web of evil spun at last...
Winter spawn from barren thighs
To readdress, to slay the blind
And throw the reins untethered to the skies

They pray to the full moon rising
Diana moving with such infinite grace
Wrapped alone in a blanket of nightfall
How many secrets can they read by your face?

Will they know of majesty
Of beauty held in dream-dead sleep
And scarlet seas that bleed the frozen shores?
Will their "god" of bridled love
Assuage our rule from planes above
Or shrink in fear from Chaos roused for war?

WAR!

Wrest askew the nails
That have held you, lurking deep
September prayers are waning
Burn the shrines of fettered sheep
Spearhead the insurrection
Of a world that seeks no end
"We are what we are, what we shall be, again..."

Appear; draped in terror
To the comfort of your kin
Stain the milky sunset red
And let the others in...

Summer's dying...

No Time To Cry lyrics - Cradle of Filth

(originally by Sisters of Mercy)

It's just a feeling
I get sometimes
A feeling
Sometimes
And I get frightened
Just like you
I get frightened too
But it's...

[CHORUS]

(No no no) No time for heartache
(No no no) No time to run and hide
(No no no) No time for breaking down
(No no no) No time to cry

Sometimes in the world as is you've
Got to shake the hand that feeds you
It's just like Adam says
It's not so hard to understand
It's just like always coming down on
Just like Jesus never came and
What did you expect to find
It's just like always here again it's...

[CHORUS]

Everything will be alright
Everything will turn out fine
Some nights I still can't sleep
And the voices pass with time
And I keep
[repeat]
No time for tears
No time to run and hide
No time to be afraid of fear
I keep no time to cry

[CHORUS]

The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh lyrics - Cradle of Filth

From the primeval mass
Let precious chaos vent
Sacred flesh drenched in fornication
Beloved by Set
May the winds gather her together
From the secrets of men
After thousands of years of terrifying silence
She comes again

(All Destroyer)

The abolition of the yeshua begins...

Shattered are the icons of the worthless
The Goddess scorned is a Valkyrie born
Scattered are the wings of the virulent holy
Leave their husks to be the prey of vultures and dogs

World without end
Cherish the lissome wants of pernicious evil
Dusk in her eyes
Torn bloody weeping skies
Darkness will hasten to devour
And the weak will flee or die

Heil Vaskt, drinker of blood, dancer on flames, disposer of light, lover of darkness.
Shes holding an inquisition from the bandaged, feeble, watch.

I slay the lamb in the fervour of thine
Abandonment unto Our Lady
With a quenchless thirst for the infinite
For Her that exists beyond all knowledge

Storming from tired centuries
Under the glare of a waxing death-moon
Terrible beauty of love severed
Rip the baby from the virginal womb

The blood of Jesus
Is the wine of the dead
And the drunken angels
Bleed with incest

The Liliot suckle on Her fruitful breasts
And yield the swords that sever and stain
There will be no act or passion wrought
That shall not be attributed to Her names

To the name of Baphomet...
Artemis, Bastet, Astarte

I yearn to thee who art darkness in thy rising

Suicide And Other Comforts lyrics - Cradle of Filth

I pace, alone
In a place for the dead
Overcome by woe
And here, I've grown
So fond of dread
That I swear it's heaven

Oh sweet Mary,
Dressed in grief
Roll back the stone

With these words scrawled in a severed hand
Tears fall like shards of glass that band
In rivers, like sinners
Swept with me to join the damned

A darkened sky
The day that laughter died
Fell swiftly into night
And stayed within Her sight
Staring at the knife
Oh God, how easy now the sacrifice
My life, to have Her with me

So farewell to distant thunder
Those inept stars I've worshipped under
Fall father, their Father
Lies in wait in flames below
Whilst my love, a blood red flower
Calls to me from verdant bowers
Graveside, I cry
Please save me from this Hell I know

A darkened sky
The day that laughter died
Fell swiftly into night
And stayed within Her sight
Staring at the knife
Oh God, how easy now to sacrifice
My life, to have Her with me

An eye for an eye as espied in the bible
My faith is lost to the burning of idols
One less cross to press upon the survival
Of this lorded agony

And I, (much as I have tried
To bury Her from mind,
Fate's tourniquet was tied, when She died...)
Still sense Her presence so divine
Lithe arms about my throat
Like pining swans entwined
Footfalls at nightfall close to mine

Suicide is a tried and tested formula for release

I snatch Her whisper like the wind through cedars
See Her face in every natural feature
Midst the mist and sleepy hollows of fever...
With glee deceiving me

Suicide is a tried and tested formula for release

I hear Her voice from where the grave defies Her
Siren song to sing along, no finer
Suicide notes, harmonised in a minor
Strike a chord with misery

No light nor reef
No unsinkable of romance keeps me
Safely from the stormy seas
Now drowning, resounding
Death-knells pound my dreams
Unthinkable to dredge through this
Listless and lonely winter frieze

A darken sky
This day hereafter dies
Falls swiftly into night
And stays within my sight
Staring at the knife
Oh God, how ease it was to sacrifice
My life, to have Her with me

No more a victim of a crusade
Where souls are strung from a moral palisade
I slit my wrists and quickly slip away...
I journey now on jewelled sands
Beneath a moon to Summerlands
To grace Her lips with contraband
The blaze once in my veins

Dinner At Deviant's Palace lyrics - Cradle of Filth

[Backwards]

Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Black Goddess Rises II lyrics -

Thee I invoke, bornless one
All woman, pure predator
Wherein conspiracy and impulse dwell
Like a seething fall from grace

Thee I worship...

Thou art darkest Gabrielle
Lilith who rode the steed
Thou art pale Hecate
Rising from Thessaly

Crush their unworthy idols
No church shall bar our path
Seductive Evil, drink your fill
Of the bleeding Christ in your arms

Thou art in my dreams
The darkness in my eyes
The rapture in my screams
Black goddess arise

Nothing will keep us apart
We could kill them all
If our desire tore free
Our union is one, sweet, sinful Eve

As the night draws in beside her
As we embrace the dark with designs
I pour my soul to those eyes of fire
As I bury my seed deep inside

Archangel, snare the flesh
Suck dry the ebbing wound
Leave them lifeless and broken
My beloved...

Oh, how I have craved for you
You so pure and other-worldly with your scent of Winter
Am I to bleed myself dry just to see your delight?

And the fear retreats forever
(Come to me... Black Goddess arise)
When my secrets are buried in thine
(Come to me... Black Goddess arise)
Under seven stars we came together
(Come to me... Black Goddess arise)
To plot the new age's decline
(Come to me... ARISE!)

Ishtar my Queen
Come forth to me
And help me seize
My future from the House of Death

That in the release of immortality
I should slay their fucking Nazarene
Ah... the lies... the jew... I kill for you

Hidden lusts will break the gates and swarm
As love secretes the thrill for war
The virgin raped shall seek to whore
She-wolf bare your snarling jaw

Scorched Earth Erotica lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Sunset, expect
This to be your last with Our vast return
As Death is set
At three sixes where hill-beacons burn

Darkness, undress
Your descending skirts yield a thirsting altar
Blood-red, yet still unfed
Lips distend ending, time to falter

Welcome, arms tied down crucified...
The slaughter

Lightening freezes seven
Outtakes from the rape of the world
Sins expelled from Heaven
Now befoul from the bowels of Hell

Where the tragic in theory and practice fell

Last prayers, hang in the air
Each unto their own rag and bonemeal saviours
Strung where crippled vultures dare
Golgotha
Coughs another cross to grave God's failure

Once the forests spired
Nurtured in Nature'heart
Now dreat cedars feed the pyres
Need-fires lit for greater harm
As Her children toy with razors

Sightless and deeply scarred
And the moon arose to phase Her
Cracks a grin so wide it hides the stars

And lights Our path
Back through the shattered glass

(We come like drumming thunder
Tides enwreathed in scum and plunder
Kraken-teethed to tear asunder
All those too blind to see...)

Where the tragic in theory and practice meet

Deranged, uncaged
We rage like a plague through this age of greed
Sowers of discord, growing wars to reap
A terrible crop to beat a vicious retreat

Scorched Earth, rebirth
Disintered in the writhe of the lone survivor
Whose worth is worse than the curse
Of Sardonicus choking on his own saliva

Who shares the last laugh now
Dead wedded fates fulfil their vows?
Foot in mouth of sacred cows
Face down in dust and poisoned ground...

"Midian" (2000)

Cthulhu Dawn lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Cthulhu dawn

Spatter the stars
Douse their luminosity
With our amniotic retch
Promulgating the birth
Of another Hell on Earth
Shadows gather poisoned henna for the flesh
A necrotic cattle brand
The hissing downfall pentagram
Carven deep upon the church doors of the damned
But no Passover is planned
A great renewal growls at hand
And only when they're running
Will they come to understand...

So ends the pitiful reign of Man

When the moon exhales
Behind a veil
Of widowhood and clouds
On a Biblical scale
We raise the stakes
To silhouette the impaled
Crowds...

Within this kissed disembowel arena
A broken seal on an ancient curse
Unleashes beasts from the seismic breach
With lightning reach and genocidal thirst
Mountains of archaos theories
In collision as at planetary dawn
Apocalypse's razorbacks
Beat wings on glass as thunder cracks
Unfurled across a world hurled to the black

Cthulhu dawn

Shatter the glass house
Wherein spirits breathe out
Halitosis of the soul
From a recking abscess
Plague of far righteousness
All fates hang in the balance
Mocking crucified dolls
An inquisition outs
When the Sun goes out our powers
Will extend throughout Heaven like Asphodel
As they have for countless lustrum
In dark Midian accustoned
To burning effigies of our enemies well

So begins the sibilant world Death knell...

When a corpse wind howls
And awakes from drowse
The scheming dead freed
Of gossamer shrouds
We gorgonise eyes
Of the storm aroused
Red...

Blinding time
All lines dine on this instance
A melting spool of beggar, negative frames
The skies teem alive, to watch die
Mankind hauled to fable in vast tenement graves...

Cthulhu dawn

Saffron's Curse lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Through arcades where shimmering snowfall
Lay in state with the sad and damned
A rent lament barely flung above a whisper
Drew Me like a ghost to the haunts of Man

I Found Her tempting fate between Her wrist and razor
A kindred spirit in a graveyard
Beneath the stature of a colder saviour
Mist hung like thieves wreathed in scant arabesques
And through the chill earth it bedwed Her drawling breast
Like a come dream true under etched glass spent
Making love to the beautiful dead

She has sinned and severed Heaven
And in it's vulgar sight
Two figures writhe, but one silhouette
Extends it's fingers to the light

"Gothic towers tottered on Her heels
As She fled asylum grounds
Committing hard crimes to soft cells
Where now another's screams resound"

From the gaspings in Her passing
Six feet under or beneath frayed gown
When Her hands pointed to midnight
In a white stained chamber bound

I Swept Her from the abyss of another dementia
Freeing Her soul from the fetters of fate
To take the reins of pleasure
Now nightwane mirrors freeze in seizure
At the glimpse of charmed pins in Her thighs
Ballrooms filled with black cats scratch
Out of spite and playful eyes

Pricked as a Witch Her stitches itch
For familiar lips to lick them dry
Whilst the dark regrasps, for if She asks
The Sun forsakes the rite to rise
And is the first to discern, that this Angel's return
Is a vengeful call on grace
For even martyrdom backs from it's suicide pacts
A leap of twisted fate betrayed...

The scars will last until the stars
Caught in Her train bewitched
Fall into line and yield the sign
That Dawn in born to their eclipse

For Our Inhumankind
Comes an underdog day Sunrise
Rippling with fire like femaledition

Wind amidst the flame
I gazed out
Tapped into the fog and shared her pain
When in her mind she sought his leave
And begged forgiveness

I splintered Her coffin and lay on the floor
Of a vault with Her clasped as the moon hugs the shore
What treachery this that She breathed no more?
Christ you bastard!

I wished Her back but the dead adored Her
Even wild winds sang in chora for Her
Saffron from my heart, from the start I swore
We'd be together more...

Creation froze with the triumph of Death
But still She stirred and awoke bereft
Of concern save for the aeons left
To lead the darkness...

She schemes of growing power and the lengths sucked hard to get it
I dream of being God but ever living to regret it
Our fecund nature decrees that Jesus wept come for
The Devil on Her knees

To grant Her lows a remedy
And mine desire's wish
To taste thereof of Heaven's scent
As sick and twisted as it is
For Her corset laced with arsenic
Hides snake curves within Her midst
Whilst Her halo of white lies supplies
Her temple to what God forbids.

Death Magick For Adepts lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Come distortured artists
Bitter things seek meaning
Even if they're madness to behold
Once forbears to horizons
Where the dead stayed dreaming
Now nightmares waken souls
That fear the living's toll

Gova, Bosch and Brueghel
Three times moonwise stain thy graves
For words alone are at loss to trace
The face of today's inhuman wraith

One half adrift in the vast abyss
Of despair and misery
The other a mask of rich red lips
Whetted by the fevers of belief and greed

All damned in this inferno
Where even Virgil averts His eyes
From the black mass mutual gang rape
Of Caesing hands an forced divides

Trespass these seven gates
To a world bloodlet to shades
Where Seraphim
(Falling on deaf ears) bleat
Of their cold and coming Master's race
In the seweres of Babylon
Stillborn to a trough anon
Chimiracles will hatch like plots
To dredge faces to pearl their cross

Enter Penteholocaust!
Five Aeons past, yet still Man grasps
At final straws to save his cast

His Lord is a leper we shall not want
He betrayed us with white lies
His acrid pall as of the tomb
Reminds us how we rot inside

Gutted like fool's paradise
Glutted on cruel appetites...

Holding court to chaos
Folding to far graver arms
A downfall fatal to all resounds
As orgies peak in self centred psalms

And Nature screams Her sufferings
Under bowed and cankered wings
A bleak scorched Earth necrotica burning
Like the robes we've torn from Her

She begs Us lay Her pain to rest
Lest We are left with nothingness
Save for Her stripped and ravished flesh

And if Her fate is not portent of Apocalypse
Then the comets that graze night skies
Will surely cleanse of wrongs and reichs
When you and I and all else dies...

It's rotting down
This carcass Maggotropolis

Interdependent as worms to the grave
Allah's true name is naught
Chist acannot save
Locked in a waltz of evermore frantic steps
Spells of regret...
Death Magick for Adepts

Be prepared to fulfill prophecies
The glorious fall of a sin dynasty

Gutted like fool's paradise
Glutted on cruel appeitites...

"We've woven hearts a thorn arbour
Left tear streaked reason upon the shore
And bereft of compass, star or more
Set out for this World's end
Few at the prow, most slave below
Painting coal a perfect gold
But for all it's worth, the engines slow
Dead in the brine again
Come cabin fever, sodomy on the bounty
Prey to phallus seas
That hiss and foam to douse disease
A storm roars on the way
Blacker than the Ace of Rapes
Dealt out by Death in darkwood glades
Our Ship of Fools, all boards handmade
Sinks, dashed by seismic waves..."

Lord Abortion lyrics - Cradle of Filth

"Care for a little necrophilia? Hmm?"

I was born with a birthmark of cinders
Debris cast from the stars and Mother
A ring of bright slaughter, I spat in the waters
Of life that ran slick from the stabwounds in Her

Dub Me Lord Abortion, the living dead
The bonesaw on the backseat
On this bitter night of giving head
A sharp rear entry, an exit in red
Lump in the throat, on my come choke
The killing joke worn thin with breath

I grew up on the sluts bastard Father beat blue
Keepsake cunts cut full out easing puberty through

Aah! Nostalgia grows
Now times nine or ten
Within this vice den called a soul
Dying resurrection
I dig deep to come again
The spasm of orgasm on a roll...

I live the slow serrated rape
The bucks fizz of amyl nitrate
Victims force fed their own face
Tear stains upon the drape
I should compare them
To a warm Summer's day
But to the letter, it is better
To lichen their names to a grave

Counting My years on an abacus strung
With labial rings and heartstrings undone

Dub Me Lord Abortion, the living dead
The bonesaw on the backseat
On this bitter night of giving head
A sharp rear entry, an exit in red
Lump in the throat, on My come choke
The killing joke worn thin with breath

Horrorscopes My diorama
A twelve part (so far) psychodrama
Another chained I mean to harm Her
Inside as well as out
A perverts gasp inside the mask
I'm hard, blow My house of cards
All turn up Death, Her bleeding starts
In brute vermilion parts...

Now I slither through the hairline cracks
In sanity, best watch your back

Possessed with levering Hell's gates wide
Liberating knives to cut Humanity slack

My ambition is to slay anon
A sinner in the hands of a dirty God
Who lets Me prey, a Gilles De Rais
Of light where faith leads truth astray

I slit guts guts and free the moistest faces
Corrupt the corpse and seize the choicest pieces
Her alabaster limbs that dim the lit carnal grin
Vaginal skin to later taste and masturbate within

"My heart was a wardrum beat
By jugular cults in eerie jungle vaults
When number thirteen fell in My lap
Lips and skin like sin, a Venus Mantrap
My appetite whetted, storm crows wheeled
At the blurred edges or reason 'til I was fulfilled
Whors d'oeuvres eaten, I tucked Her into
A grave coffin fit for the Queen of Spades
She went out like the light in My mind
Her face an avalanche of pearl, of ruby wine...
Much was a flux, but the mouth once good for fucks
Came from retirement to prove She had not lost Her touch
I kissed Her viciously, maliciously, religiously
But when has ONE been able TO best separate the THREE?
I know I'm sick as Dahmer did, but this is what I do
Aah, aah, ahh, I'll let you sleep when I am through..."

"You Fucking Whore!"

The suspect shadow sher they least
Expect My burning grasp to reach

The stranglehold, the opened arms
Seeking sweet meat with no holes barred

Rainbows that My razors wrung
Midst Her screams and seams undone
Sung at the top of punctured lungs
I bite My spiteful tongue
Lest curses spat from primal lairs
Freeze romance where Angels, bare
Are lost to love, bloodloss, despair
I weep, they merely stare...
And stare, and stare, and stare, and stare.

Amor E Morte lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Her bouquets are wilted
Too long has She slept
Their cruel red mouths darkened
To bowed silhouettes
I saw in a new moon
With Her scent on my breath
But then all to soon
Came the hunger for flesh

I held Her in eyes like necropoli
Laying Her on a tomb with a view
Lighting Her from Her feet
To the stars in Her hair
Drove sweet blood to Her throat
And My lips parted there

(In the tone of splintered bone)
She screams benighted
My limbs ignite
A carneal carnivore
On all fours to go...

An ebon Nemesis
From torture gardens of Dis
Having never breathed an Eve
As far narcotic as this
Two spellbound hellhounds
Hearts pounding loud
Racing Heaven out of focus
Under quicksilver clouds

"God is maimed come let us prey..."
To lunar deities that pave deadways
Twixt the living and the grave
Amor e Morte
To cast our fearl shadows there
We made Love bleed on a Deathbed shared
Where, begging Me to feed
To best be Were...

I licked Her wounds and ate Her rare

Argentinum spurred
Her watnon words incurred
A sin ridden tongue
To open trading in fur
Never were those gates of pearl
So rubbed to their cusp
Never were the Worlds above
So bitten with the bestial...

Seraphim fell like guillotines
Giving gracious head

Instead of harking prophecies
And how our brother sang
Amor e Morte
In the thick evergreens
Theirs was a chorus for raucous souls
Shifting shape and lifting napes
To commemorate
Erotic stains
Amor e Morte

Unfasten thy masque
Come skyclad to my arms
Leave thy gown a dark pool at thy feet
I yearn musky valleys that no Man hath seen
The chill keen of stars
Over Yew and deep wooded ravines
A hidden meridian
Where Midian may be...

In black antlered glades
Encunted in this forest Goddess
She whispers My name
I buck under flames
Animal nitrates
Howling through my veins

I ride riptides that wrest and writhe to the fore
New lusts ecllipsing lips
That brought me to this verge of War
With inner beasts unleashed
To feast, fuck and run
Rampart in chase of She wolf pacts
Forged on heat with setting Suns

I love the night
It would murder My soul
Should I ever fall blind
For though thy flesh haunts
I keep also in mind
The stampede of clouds
From Dusk's predatory sky

Purple versed like the funeral hearse
That first turned thee over to My...
Unbridled kiss when I found thee in mist
Dressed for the sepulchre
My Demon bride...

"God is maimed come let Us prey..."
To Lunar Deities that pave deadways
Twixt the living and the grave
Amor e Morte
Ours was a chorus for raucous souls
Shifting sape and lifting nape
To commemorate
Erotic stains

Amor e Morte
Amor e Morte

Her Ghost In The Fog lyrics - Cradle of Filth

"The Moon, she hangs like a cruel portrait
Soft winds whisper the bidding of trees
As this tragedy starts with a shattered glass heart
And the Midnightmare trampling of dreams
But oh, no tears please
Fear and pain may accompany Death
But it is desire that shepherds it's certainty
As We shall see..."

She was divinity's creature
That kissed the cold mirrors
A Queen of Snows
Far beyond compare
Lips attuned to symmetry
Sought Her everywhere
Dark liqoured eyes
An Arabian nightmare...

She shone on watercolours
Of my pondlife as pearl
Until those who couldn't have Her
Cut Her free of this World

That fateful Eve when...
The trees stank of sunset and camphor
Their lanterns chased phantoms and threw
An inquisitive glance, like the shadows they cast
On my love picking rue by the light of the moon

Putting reason to flight
Or to death as their way
They crept through woods mesmerized
By the taffeta Ley
Of Her hips that held sway
Over all they surveyed
Save a mist on the rise
(A deadly blessing to hide)
Her ghost in the fog

They raped left...
(Five men of God)
...Her ghost in the fog

Dawn discovered Her there
Beneath the Cedar's stare
Silk dress torn, Her raven hair
Flown to gown Her beauty bared
Was starred with frost, I knew Her lost
I wept 'til tears crept back to prayer

She'd sworn Me vows in fragrant blood
"Never to part
Lest jealous Heaven stole our hearts"

Then this I screamed:
"Come back to Me for
I was born in love with thee
So why should fate stand in between?"

And as I drowned Her gentle curves
With dreams unsaid and final words
I espied a gleam trodden to earth
The Church bell tower key...

The village mourned her by the by
For She'd been a witch
Their Men had longed to try
And I broke under Christ seeking guilty signs
My tortured soul on ice

A Queen of snow
Far beyond compare
Lips attuned to symmetry
Sought Her everywhere
Trappistine eyes
An Arabian nightmare...

She was Ersulie possessed
Of a milky white skin
My porcelain Yin
A graceful Angel of Sin

And so for Her...
The breeze stank of sunset and camphor
My lantern chased Her phantom and blew
Their Chapel ablaze and all locked in to a pain
Best reserved for judgement that their bible construed...

Putting reason to flight
Or to flame unashamed
I swept form cries
Mesmerized
By the taffeta Ley
Or Her hips that held sway
Over all those at bay
Save a mist on the rise
A final blessing to hide
Her ghost in the fog

And I embraced
Where lovers rot...
Her ghost in the fog

Her ghost in the fog

Satanic Mantra lyrics - Cradle of Filth

"Archangel, Dark Angel
Lend me thy light
Through Death's veil
'Til we have Heaven in sight!"

Tearing The Veil From Grace lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Biblical choirs soar beyond veiled light
A swan song for ravens trapped flapping in night

A tragic yet magical fall from grace
Too awful to taste for the led and the chaste
Those whose long fetters are addressed to all saints

Free shining souls torn from God's given Reich
Defiled, reviled, exiled from sight

And Hell knows we sought victory
Chancing the leash
But when bad die were cast
We were cast down to die
A steeple of needles thrust into our eyes
So scholars might say we were blinded by pride
Like the sin of Our Father (and the whims of our kind)
Whom in Isaiah and Midian thrived
Regaining His sights for the storming of skies...

And after descenturies have crawled, vilified
Our dark harkened day on spread wing now arrives

For eternity is a coprophagic
Backward figure head
Gorging on Her own bitter end
And We have eaten shit
Until we're close to addicts
Now grime is running out
For us to make amends

To retake what once was lost
To exalt our throne above the stars of God

"To throw our fuck into gates and guts
Of a severed never land
Where we, the damned
Once pleasured ran
Like seamen from the phallus sea"

Atrocious oceans must be crossed
To exalt our throne above the stars of God

The thirteenth sign of the Zodiac climbs
Cowled and scythed to snuff the sunrise...

Throwing shades of war before like prophecy
Night breed freed from the vasty deep
...Nasty reap of freaks forsaken
And when sultry Dusk disrobes they'll learn
She is not a natural blond
For the lower She goes the darker it grows
An Eve that blows on Her knees for Satan

Fellated Satan
Screams congeal in clotted pearl
As He unfurls from aching hibernation

Stormbringer drums thunder to full Dis orchestra
As lighting streaks with fire
Black clouds that shroud the Earth
Whose cold breasts have held us in scar pillories
But now the Sun is loath to come
The crescent moon is freed...

Elated Satan
The scimitar slash to the under gash
Of Heaven too slight for penetration

We strike as wolves from the thickening fog
To exalt our throne over the stars of God
Lowly holy goats bare the brunt
Of rabid dogmas on a stellar bearhunt
Bastioned in citadels and monastic cells
That smell of blessed cunt
Like a convent where crosses rust
From thirty dirty habits of shaved nun
There where deeper needs are begged of lust
And cess and less impress enough

Obtaining the ord of Our Guardian, Anger
And Death's tunnel vision
Bad thing in collision
The locking of eyes and jagged antler

Unpicking the seams of fate sewn over dreams
Feasting from throats of celestial thieves

And God knows we seek victory
Now that we are unleashed
To drive nails home of blind faith through those
Who drove us from error to terror below
Refugees clung to a crown furred in flies
Tarred with red honey, the plaster
Of many a spire that aspired to rise
Seeking Messiahs that by us soon die...

In the start like a cast
In morality plays
Our hearts wore a mask
Of dead rooks in the rain
The World was our cloister
No prayer, bent in shame
Our once lucent plumage
Stung with horn withered grey...
And away...
As Aeons slew so we grew to myth
Revenge accrued to a monolith
Bursting through from our roofed abyss
Like an aether greased fist
Now vulvite gates are so sorely missed
Our horror pours through the orifice
Where once the spheres and archangels kissed
Phallelujah!

Fellated Satan
His coming assails
The Night In Gales
That bewail turned tides
That engulf their nation

Now divinity is a worm ridden mouth
In a darkened high house
Overrun by disease
So let the truth be wrung
That the Banished Ones intent
On reinstatement have won

We breathe by virtue of their rot
Now our souls exult above the stars of God

Tortured Soul Asylum lyrics - Cradle of Filth

"Oh, sweet Midian,
I burn for thee at heart.
Don't despair me.
Come bare me on wings of graveyard robbed leather
To where pleasure rings deep secrets
In spurts, after dark..." *

Under full moons waxing lyrically:
Death's poetry floods the soul,
Like the freezing seed of a demon freed
To curse the stars with vertigo.
And in their dance, in trance I've prised wide
Slick rifts twixt obsidian thighs,
Hymeneal gates to darker sides.
A glimpse of plinths where Midian lies.

Midian...

Haunted by this portent,
This obsession in my mind.
With a city sunk below,
Tall cedar groves and graves sublime
Sporting their importance,
Marble wings spread to the skies.
A vale of dreams that it would seem,
The daylights race to leave behind.

These visions struck like a furious fuck
Nailing wet lips to cold cemetery walls.
Flashes of lust to dust
Splashed across my psychic pall,
As hybrid lovers reached their cusp
With final thrusts I saw it all.

Forbidden Midian,
A long fabled Judecca.
A sanctuary for sin...

You rival Heaven
Above Heaven's tragic wreck
(Though the only Angels in repose
Were those with ivy strangled necks)
Small mercies in vistas of dolmen and vault.
Gaunt, haunched edifices
Midst lightfingered mists,
From whence more awful shadows
Drew back rusted bolts
And dared a threshold.
The searing Sun had knelt to kiss.

Shades of dusk, cruelty and myth,
The Tribes of Christ will not forgive -
And shall not suffer their kind to live!

For I, mesmerized, started not from tombs,
Or their waltz so sibilant
Through the gathering gloom!
But from flumes of the moon in bloom,
Baring each a face effaced,
And raped in the womb!

In hidden Midian,
A Vatican lying in state,
For the sanctity of sin...

To rival Heaven
Free of Heaven's tragic wreck
(Though the only Angels that arose
Were those who fell to most requests)
Small mercies in vistas where dolmen and vault
Caught twisted whispers where fisted sisters
Haunched, flaunted orifice
Midst lighter fingered mists.
Whilst I watched without revolt,
Carnalities few beasts permit.

Between the dog and wolf,
Bared fangs met in intercourse.
A nightly rite of teeth and cunt,
For those below who rose to hunt.

Soar sights that preyed on Me for days,
And in laudenum's haze
I painted them all...

The slew of sith and kin
I drew in blood, my veins in thrall
To Deathugees at peace within
Grotesques and wolves in women's skins
The raven winged and missing limb
Suicides and split thighed Seraphim.

And marble stairs
Stargrazers dare
Ascend like prayer
(As smoke or ghost or lithe nightmares)

Under full moons waxing lyrically:
Death's poetry floods the soul,
Like the freezing seed of a demon freed
To curse the star with vertigo.
And in their dance, in trance I've prised wide
Slick rifts twixt obsidian thighs,
Hymeneal gates to other sides.
A glimpse of plinths where Midian lies.

Midian...

I know I've seen
Through the black backed mirrors in sanity:
Lucent prides amassed in last retreat,
Prurient souls but no more freaks
Than those leashing dreams at harm's length from Me.
And just like grim ascension prophecies,
My revenge, carved deep, will be
A grisly plot that reads,
Like my filthy white ward spattered with their screams.

When My Deviliverers come from fog for Me...

... Please come for me...

Exhuming the moon,
Through the bars in My room.
The sooner the bitter pills swallowed are through.
But no Genotypes, Aphrodites, Demon archetypes,
No Cenobites rise to clame me from you!

No! No! No!
Don't leave here in this storm weathered cell!
No! No! No!
With prophets and losses,
And dead men from crosses,
My fate is a preview of derelict Hell!

Midian!
Midian!

For Those Who Died lyrics - Cradle of Filth (feat. Martin Walkyier)

(originally by Sabbat)

Our tongues they could not silence with their malicious lies,
Their unforgotten violence, remember those who died.

And as my flesh is put to fire I hear their voices still,
Their unjust accusations demanding I am killed.

"We shall show no mercy to heathen such as thee,
Who stand accused and have refused the Church's clemency,
Your wicked acts are endless through the crimes we cannot name,
Innocent or guilty proved, we'll burn you just the same."

Burning, into the fire.
Burning, a funeral pyre.
Burning, into the fire.
Burning, a funeral pyre.

This self-righteous inquisition is a plague upon our land,
As false as the confessions they force from shattered hands.

"We shall show no mercy to heathen such as thee,
Who stand accused and have refused the Church's clemency,
Your wicked acts are endless through the crimes we cannot name,
Innocent or guilty proved, we'll burn you just the same."

Burning, into the fire.
Burning, a funeral pyre.
Burning, into the fire.
Burning, a funeral pyre.

Abused my broken body is cleansed by righteous flame,
Their God a 'God of Mercy' yet in whose name I slain.

My innocence the victim of their superstitious fears,
Religious persecution for the past three hundred years.
Preaching peace and mercy 'neath the shadow of the knife,
A papal reign of terror, slaughter in the name of Christ.

And as my flesh is put to fire I hear their voices still,
Their unjust accusations demanding I am killed.

"We shall show no mercy to heathen such as thee,
Who stand accused and have refused the Church's clemency,
Your wicked acts are endless through the crimes we cannot name,
Innocent or guilty proved, we'll burn you just the same."

Burning, into the fire.
Burning, a funeral pyre.
Burning, into the fire.
Burning, a funeral pyre.

EP: "From The Cradle To Enslave" (1999)

From The Cradle To Enslave lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Two thousand fattened years like maniacs
Have despoiled our common grave
Now what necrophagous Second Coming backs
From the cradle to enslave?

Sickle constellations
Stud the belts that welt the sky
Whilst the bitter winter moon
Prowls the cloud, dead-eyed
Like shifting parent flesh
Under silk matricide...

Watchful as she was upon Eden
Where every rose arbour and orchard she swept
Hid the hissing of a serpent Libido
In an ancient tryst with catastrophe
Soon the be kept

Hear that hissing now on the breeze
As through the plundered groves of the carnal garden
A fresh horror blows but ten billion souls
Are blind to see the rotting wood for the trees

This is the theme to a better Armageddon
Nightchords rake the heavens
PAN DAEMON AEAON

And what use are prayers to that god?
As devils bay concensus for the space to piss
On your smouldering faith
And the mouldering face
Of this world long a paradise lost

This is the end of everything
Hear the growing chora that a new dawn shall bring

Danse macabre 'neath the tilt of the zodiac
Now brighter stars shall reflect on our fate
What sick nativities will be freed when those lights burn black?
The darkside of the mirror always threw our malice back...

I see the serpentine in your eyes
The nature of the beast as revelations arrive

Our screams shall trail to Angels
For those damned in flames repay
All sinners lose their lot on Judgement Day
We should have cut our looses as at Calvary
But our hearts like heavy crosses held the vain belief
Salvation, like a promised nation
Gleamed a claim away...

This is the end of everything you have ever known
Buried like vanquished reason
Death is season
Drive like the drifting snow
Peace, a fragile lover, left us fantasising war
On our knees or another f**ker's shore
Heiling new flesh
Read, then roared
To a crooked cross and a Holy Cause
What else be whipped to frenzy for?

This is the end of everything
Rear the tragedies
That the Seraphim shall sing

Old adversaries
Next to Eve
Now they're clawing back
I smell their cumming
As through webbed panes of meat
Led by hoary Death
They never left
Dreaming sodomies
To impress on human failure
When we've bled upon our knees

Tablatures of gravel law
Shall see Gehennah paved
When empires fall
And nightmares crawl
From the cradle to enslave....

This is the end of everything

Of Dark Blood And Fucking lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Sister midnight comes blaspheming
Screaming in the keys of faith and fear
Unentwining our spines twists me to kneeling...
Spilling like the moonlight on her glistening rear

Defiled at heart
In this perfect hell
Under red leaves bleeding
Over scaled chateau we fell
To demonocracy
Where neither Adam or Eve
Conceived of such iniquities
From pleasure or pain
Or the razor's edge inbetween
Thou art my seventh heaven burning
Going down as with the sun...

Within like a river fluids moves a torrent
Bound to please
On denierred knees
In any wicked way
That her whims may warrant

I hang on every verb
Every dirty word
Interred
In her pornoglossa...

Christlike, whipped and weak
Painted nails driven through the meek
Yet in obituary
My dreams still weep
Of dark blood and f**king thee

Thou art seventh heaven burning
Going down as with the day
Baring lunar curvature
Like canvas for a lick of pain

Writhing like a viper
Deep inside her Eden
Forbidden to eat
I kiss leylines to her feet
Then baiting wrath
I steal a path
Back to the fruits of her womb

Back to the crack of her tomb...

Her roseate sliver
Quivers with snuff appeal
The torque of her hips
Lip-sync me in for the kill
Tongue-tied, tightrope and spread like disease
I drain the cup of this Miss Sire
Her water into wine for me

Thou art my seventh angel squirming
'Neath the forked tongue of the beast
Arching toward the fabled
Like a sculptured nymph seeking base relief...

Whilst the world outside
(A wood of suicide)
Would die for this release
Our slow orgasmic fuses greet...

By night and by candle
At each other's throat
In a slick drift of red
Setting god's teeth on edge
We were as wolves preying inside the fold
Of a slaughtered lamb throw
On a four poster bed...

Succulent, Succubus

Laid without rest
In the dead of the night
Succulent, Succubus

In thy arms
And thy wetness
On glossed lips I taste
Conspiracies, secrecies, sorceries laced
With thick unguent rum
Black-rayed suns and Autumn
Always in season for our nightfall from grace

Gorge upon my seed
Starved Persephone
Succulent, Succubus
Succour me.
That I might keep
Thee with me in Hades
Succulent, Succubus
Succour me

Death Comes Ripping lyrics - Cradle of Filth

(originally by The Misfits)

Turn the lights down low
And close the door, oh
Future is coming
Future risin'

Shotgun blast, a demon piece of lead

With both eyes open
I wait up for the kill
Feel the evil
Feel the heat as I blast you open

Death comes ripping
And it's going, death comes ripping
You feel the heat as death comes ripping
Rip your back out
And death comes ripping out

Flesh and blood
To weak for you
Turnin' it over
A little too late to penetrate

Death comes ripping
And it's going death comes ripping
You feel the heat as death comes ripping
It'll rip your back out
Death comes ripping

And it's going, death comes ripping
You feel the heat as death comes ripping
You rip your back out
Death comes ripping

And it goes, death comes ripping out

Sleepless lyrics - Cradle of Filth

(originally by Anathema)

And I often sigh
I often wonder why
I'm still here and I still cry

And I often cry
I often spill a tear
Over those not here
But still they are so near

Please ease my burden
And I still remember
A memory and I weep
In my broken sleep
The scars they cut so deep

Please ease my burden
Please ease my pain

Surely without war there would be no loss
Hence no mourning, no grief, no pain, no misery
No sleepless nights missing the dead... Oh, no more
No more war

Funeral In Carpathia (Be Quick Or Be Dead Version) lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Candelabra snuffed prey - silhouette wedded
Nightfall take my hand
Seduce me with silky timbred limbs
Grant me thy dark command
Over the peaks framing tapestries
Of thick forest, dusk has filled
With Lucifugous kisses enwreathed in mist
Creeping like violations from the shadows to kill

Lucretia
is my love in vein
When thy tears bleed sweeter
Thank the midsummer rain?
Bewinged, infested belfries
Toll o'er the sobbing throng
A writhe of lethargic, terrored nudes
Whipped and welted neath the barbed windsong...

(in saddean paradise
Ancestral legacies linger on....)

I am He
The crowned and conquering darkness
Satan robed in ecumenical filth
Livid Bacchus sustained by bridal echelons of sylph

This wintry eve when the snow glistens deep
And sharpened turrets wed the jewelless skies
I shrug off the shroud of preternatural sleep
Enbroided by these words Malaresia scribed...

"Beauty slept and angels wept
For Her immortal soul
In this response, all evil chose
To claim her for their very own"

Carpathia
The pleasured dead speak of her
In necromantic tongue
When ambered daylights are done

Masterbating in their graves
On her zenith to come...

This catafalque night when awed stars report
Their absence from the heavenly brow
Crippled seraph shalt cower in illustrious courts
Whilsts the cloaked maelstrom resounds throughout

"How the storm it fulfills
My heart though unhealed
Celestial knifes ebonied
And wild woods thrill
Yet far fiercer still
Her lustre eviscerates me"

Carpathia
Priapic lovers twist in concert with Her
Covenants are struck, jagged lightning fellates
The path towards the castle weary innocence takes

I rule as Master here
Where feral hordes impart my temper
Love sank wounded when I, betrayed
saw death etch cruelly, upon my lineage

"Usher the spite seething Draconist
And commit this world to thy ancient
sovereignty"

Erunescent veil descend
Psalmed sunset thus portends
And laid to rest, I now am blessed
With this darkness... Forever more

Supreme Vampiric Evil

Dawn Of Eternity lyrics - Cradle of Filth

(originally by Massacre)

Winter ice - Terminal frost
Closing eyes of the equinox
Dimensional change - darkening skies
The sphere is shackled till dusk

Prophet dreams - ride the winds
As black holes open for devouring
Universal chaos in the realm of time
Surface of earth - covered in rime

From beyond enter the horror
Of a dark and hideous nature
The fall of man is now at hand
Awakened from an ancient slumber
The immortal ones return
The earth is theirs once again

Stricken, cursed - frozen damnation
Man's fall to perpetual domination
Time trapped in between changes
Frigid return to the chamber of ages

"Cruelty And The Beast" (1998)

Thirteen Autumns And A Widow lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Spawned wanton like blight on an auspicious night
Her eyes betrayed spells of the moon's eerie light
A disquieting gaze forever ghosting far seas
Bled white and dead, Her true mother was fed
To the ravenous wolves that the elements led
From crag-jagged mountains that seemingly grew in unease

Through the maw of the woods, a black carriage was drawn
Flanked by barbed lightning that hissed of the storm
(Gilded in crests of Carpathian breed)
Bringing slaves to the sodomite for the new-born
On that eve when the Countess' own came deformed
A tragedy crept to the name Bathory

Elizabeth christened, no paler a rose
Grew so dark as this sylph
None more cold in repose
Yet Her beauty spun webs
Round hearts a glance would betroth

She feared the light
So when She fell like a sinner to vice
Under austere, puritanical rule
She sacrificed...
Mandragora like virgins to rats in the wall
But after whipangels licked prisoners, thralled
Never were Her dreams so maniacally cruel
(And possessed of such delights)
For ravens winged Her nightly flights
Of erotica
Half spurned from the pulpit
Torments to occur
Half learnt from the cabal of demons
In Her
Her walk went to voodoo
To see Her own shadow adored
At mass without flaw
Though inwards She abhored
Not Her coven of suitors
But the stare of their Lord

"I must avert mine eyes to hymns
For His gaze brings dogmas to my skin
He knows that I dreamt of carnal rites
With Him undead for three long nights"

Elizabeth listened
No sermons intoned
Dragged such guilt to Her door
Tombed Her soul with such stone
For She swore the Priest sighed
When She knelt down to atone...

She feared the light
So when She fell
Like a sinner to vice
Under austere, puritanical rule
She sacrificed
Her decorum as chaste
To this wolf of the cloth
Pouncing to haunt
Her confessional box
Forgiveness would come
When Her sins were washed off
By rebaptism in white....

The looking glass cast Belladonna wreaths
'Pon the grave of Her innocence
Her hidden face spat murder
From a whisper to a scream
All sleep seemed cursed
In Faustian verse
But there in orgiastic Hell
No horrors were worse
Than the mirrored revelation
The She kissed the Devil's phallus
By Her own decree...

So with windows flung wide to the menstrual sky
Solstice Eve She fled the castle in secret
A daughter of the storm, astride Her favourite nightmare
On winds without prayer
Stigmata still wept between Her legs
A cold bloodedness which impressed new hatreds
She sought the Sorceress
Through the snow and dank woods to the sodomite's lair

Nine twisted fates threw hewn bone die
For the throat of Elizabeth
Damnation won and urged the moon
In soliloquy to gleam
Twixt the trees in shafts
To ghost a path
Past the howl of buggered nymphs
In the sodomite's grasp
To the forest's vulva
Where the witch scholared Her
In even darker themes

"Amongst philtres and melissas
Midst the grease of strangled men
And eldritch truths, elder ill-omen
Elizabeth came to life again"

And under lacerations of dawn She returned
Like a flame unto a deathshead
With a promise to burn
Secrets brooded as She rode
Through mist and marsh to where they showed
Her castle walls wherein the restless
Counted carrion crows

She awoke from a fable to mourning
Church bells wringing Her madly from sleep
Tolled by a priest, self castrated and hung
Like a crimson bat 'neath the belfry
The biblical prattled their mantras
Hexes six-tripled their fees
But Elizabeth laughed, thirteen Autumns had passed
And She was a widow from god and His wrath, finally...

Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Hear Me now!
All crimes should be treasured if they bring thee pleasure somehow...

Maleficent in dusky rose
Gathered satin lapped Her breasts
Like blood upon the snow
A tourniquet of Topaz
Glistened at Her throat
Awakening, pulled from the tomb
Her spirit freed eclipsed the moon
That She outshone as a fallen star
A regal ornament from a far flung nebular

Her likeness hung in the black gallery
Commanding unease
Demanding of Death to breathe...

Midst the whirl and daylight fauna
Of society at court
Elizabeth bedazzled, Her presence sought applause
Though Her torchlit shadow
Thrown upon damp cellar walls
Greeted nothing but despair from slaves Her nights enthralled

Thirteen Winter solstices had shown
Her path, that the dark
Had marked its dominion
Spaying the confessor
Whose caresses she'd known,
As whipcord in the House of Dog
Her cold cunt meat on holy bone

Raped of faith, She now embraced
The narcissistic unrest frozen on the mirror's face
With this disdain, inside these veins
(Highborn wanton that She was)
She sought to keep what age would claim
Her soul was sold and for this toll
Reeking pyres ever smouldered
On the whims of one so in control
Elizabeth, mysterious.
Cruelty brought thee orchids
From the bowels of the abyss

Once upon atrocity when midwitches stifled cries
And carved abortive runes in reddened wombs
Exhumed by scrying eyes
Madness came upon
Her like an amourous lover's seed
Lifesblood splashed upon Her skin
In gouts torture unleashed

And to Her dead reflection
Twas as if Her pallor gleamed
Like an angel's warmed by candles
Where erotic stains had cleaved
So demons dragged this libertine
Lusts screaming for release
Upon the flesh of maidens preened
As canvas for caprice

Exacting obeisance
Her gaze held a seance
Of spirits too trapped under glass to commune
A sleeter mistress than Luna
Whose threats to consume Her
Met with torments giving vent to Her swoon

Flat on Her back
Pack-prey for the reams
Of verses and curses
That haunted Her dreams
Midnightmare chimed
Thirteen in Her mind
A disciple of scars
Branded years hissed behind
Ridden split-thighed
By the Father of lies
An ovation of wolves
Blushed the skies as they writhed

But Heaven is never forever
She came, a spent storm
From the clouds...

Leaving serpents in office
Inside every gate
To lick righteous holes
Blinding Lords to the fate
Of virgins forced naked
To defile on rent knees
Hacked and racked backwards
Menses choking their pleas

"More. Whore. More.
Twitching make me wet with thee
Carcass rub me raw"

And to Her dead reflection
Twas as if Her pallor gleamed
Like an angel's warmed by candles
Where erotic stains had cleaved
So demons dragged this libertine
Lusts screaming for release
Upon the flesh of maidens preened
As canvas for caprice

Raped of faith, She now embraced
The narcissistic unrest frozen on the mirror's face
With this disdain, inside these veins
(Highborn wanton that She was)
She sought to keep what age would claim
Her soul was sold and for this toll
Reeking pyres ever smouldered
On the whims of one so in control
Elizabeth, mysterious.
Cruelty brought thee orchids
From the bowels of the abyss
From the bowels of the abyss

Beneath The Howling Stars lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Midwinter wrongs the rites of Spring
Her spinal chill rakes the earth
Whilst pensive souls at zero sing
Woebetidings of rebirth
Under cold stares of Mars maligned
Near-suicides cross their hearts
And unborns writhe in tepid brine
For something wicked this way starts

Beneath the howling stars

Elizabeth, paragon of vice
Watches the sun set pyres alight
As Bane and Tyranny, Her Dobermans sleep
Like spellbound paramours at Her feet

A chatter of bells without
Raise hellhounds, teeth on edge
From sleighs hastened through snow lit red
Guests espied from the garret ledge

Great gloomy mirror tell Her face
She will outblind them all
That heavenly bodies would fall from grace
To possess such a lustrous pall

For beauty is always Cruel...
For beauty is always...

(Let destiny in chains commence...
Damnation under Gods seeking recompense
Enslaving to the whims of this mistress)

As the dance ensued
Elizabeth's mood
Tempered by the craft of a vitreous moon
In slick black iciness it grew
To consume
The wench Her tower tombed
Tending to Her costume
Bore the brunt of the storm
When the needle askewed
She has Her dogs maul the bitch's wrists through
Restored to jaded bliss
This evisceratrix
Descended to the ball
With painted blood upon Her lips
Passing like a comet so white
As to eclipse
The waltz wound down, transfixed

Devoid of all breath in the air
Even Death paled to compare
To the taint of Her splendour
So rare and engendered
'Pon the awed throng gathered
There...

Beneath the howling stars

She danced so macabre
Men entranced divined from Her gait
That this angel stepped from a pedestal
Had won remission from fate
By alighting to darker spheres
Delighting in held sway
For She was not unlike the Goddess
To whom the wolves bayed

"Whilst envy glanced daggers
From court maidens, arboured
Who whispered in sects
Of suspicions abroad
That Elizabeth bewitched
See how even now the whore casts
Her spells upon the Black Count
Whom Her reddened lips hold fast"

Tongue unto tongue
Swept on tides without care
For the harpies who rallied
Their maledict glares
A halo of ravens tousled Her hair
Chandeliers a tiara
For passions ensnared

"Phantasies sexed
When their eyes, moonstruck met
Their friction wore a way
Through the sea of foreplay
Lovers at first bite
She an Eve tempted to lay
Gasping at rafters
Flesh pressed in ballet"

But caprice, honours leashed
She absconded the feast
To prowl wonderland
Beasts in hand from the Keep
Of Feudal dilemma
Well mantled in furs
Through cullis to watch
Dogstars howl at the earth

On this violent night
Unholy night
Winds lashed their limbs together
As the ether vent its wintry spite

She wished His kiss on Her frozen landscapes
To excite the bleak advance
From castle bowers
Wherein small hours
The Devil never came by chance
A lone charm tied to Her inner thigh
Sent lusts nova as hooves trod
Cobbled streets where lowlives fleet
Were flung to a wayward god

Midwinter wrongs the rites of Spring
Her spinal chill rakes the earth
Whilst pensive souls at zero sing
Woebetidings of rebirth
Under cold stares of Mars maligned
Near-suicides cross their hearts
And unborns writhe in tepid brine
For something wicked this way starts

Beneath the howling stars

Pounding upon the pauper ridge
Earshot of a hunched beldame
Elizabeth teased, would He dare to please
Such elderly loins enflamed?
To this He feigned a grim disdain
Playing to Her slayful eye
But the hag replied...

"This girl that chides
Will soon be as plagued with age as I"

Her consort laughed a plume of icy breath
For Elizabeth's grace could raise
A flag of truce in burning heaven
Or the dead from early graves
Yet still She seethed
This proud Snow Queen
Embittered with the cursed retort
And because He sought Her loves onslaught
He gutted the crone for sport

Soon in full moon fever they were wed
Lycanthropic in the conjugal bed
Littered with aphrodisiacs
To tease dynastic union
And beget them further maniacs

Elizabeth
Free reigned, now a Countess
Outwielded and outwore
Her title like a favoured dress
Whilst Her errant Lord
Whose seasons savoured war
Stormed black to fell the infidel
Her embers, tempered, roared.


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