CRADLE OF FILTH LYRICS

1. Exquisite Torments Await

Abandon hope all ye who enter here
For herein lies the path to sadness
The poetry of woe set midst the sweet lament of fear
Carouses in fantasia like spirits cast to madness

Here we prey
Severe, the day

Dies irae
Dies illa
Dies tribulation
Et angustie
Dies calamitati
Et miseriae
Dies tenebrarum
Et caliginis
Dies nebulae
Et turbinis
Dies tubae
Et clangoris…

Fresh meat now tests there jaws of death

2. Heartbreak And Seance

Before the war, this grave darksome pall
Pressed upon the face of England
We were sovereign to nothing less
Than the map of our souls solicitous to reign
Together in a peace these wicked times disdain

Then Empire saw much more to gain

The Crown discounts our loss
Life cannot count the cost
These numbers fount like water
The dead and dying, those on route to slaughter

Valentine sweet spine entwined
I am sorry that I left you here, in time
I will find the path back from the other side
So keep a candle burning
In your heart that is my shrine

No Memento Mori
For he passed away
For faraway glory
So tear the pages
From this castaway story

Spilling tears
Fill her lachrymatory

She seeks to pierce the veil
Melancholia
Speaks the fiercest tale
Weeks are growing lonelier
Even stonier regaled

Love's bond responding
Beyond the pale

The planchette is promissory
Purveyance of the seance
In obeisance to the spirits
Before their dismissory

The Crown discounts our loss
Life cannot count the cost
These numbers fount like water
The dead and dying, those on route to slaughter

Valentine sweet spine entwined
I am sorry that I left you here, in time
I will find the path back from the other side
So please accept my kisses
Through the whispers of the Ouija board

I suffer alone
So far from home
Watching you from a distance
A shadow's persistence to roam

No time to atone
You flower alone
Beautifully graven
You cut a black raven
Whose tower has flown

No Memento Mori
For he passed away
For faraway glory
So tear the pages
From this castaway story

Spilling tears
Fill her lachrymatory

She seeks to pierce the veil
Melancholia speaks the fiercest tale
Weeks are growing lonelier
Even stonier regaled

Love's bond responding
Beyond the pale

The planchette is promissory
Purveyance of the seance
In obeisance to the spirits
Ghosts that haunt amiss, amie

Winter seems far colder
Without you by my shoulder now this year

Faith's blinding glare advanced to frost
Finds her there, entranced to cross
To breach death's porous border
And reach where breath affords no quarter

Helpless, I see her resolve harden

This is where it ends
How the wretchedness portends
The knife in her hand
On the stretch to the promised land

And this is how they found my light
Clutching tight that fateful telegram

3. Achingly Beautiful

Night, that fatal raven alighted on the cusp of my bewitchment.
The beast in the clouds had swallowed the moon, a silverback thundering across the cosmos
In silence now stars followed her tune, winking from existence on the brink of chaos
I penned an open sonnet to the pearly gates ablaze, as I gazed upon this angel intoxicating everything!

The ball became her court, her presence there electrifying.
Candelabra fought, to tear themselves away
She was a flame, divine.
My pathic call of duty, irrefutable,
Her eyes, they paralyzed me, froze the flow of time,
a glimpse so achingly beautiful!
Fleeing from the manor, in the manner of this crime
We sheltered from the pelting, helter-skelter of the skies, in the Greek gazebo, speaking tragedian rhyme
Death would settle for one petal at a time.
He would pluck the fucker!

Lo, this malleus eve, is heaving to the pulse of souls, she was the game, sublime.
A Knight takes Queen in ruby indisputable.
Then, Her eyes, they paralyzed me for a second time.
A glimpse so achingly beautiful!

Drinking in her flora, this Aurora to the storm,
I was burning in the furnace of a love that went to war,
with ravenous desire, fires lit the heavens for,
caressing in the rainfall, a less painful metaphor
for this hunger.

On marbled tombs, breathless, cocooned, a long red dress shrouds, like Ophelia, this Goddess.
Mourning, then crawls,
Black velvet palled, to pass fervent lips, betwixt her deliciousness.
Miserere Mei Diva.
Forgive me forever my bride,
but a gift was delivered,
however perverse, on that night you exquisitely died!
Seraphina rise, Arcane perfection, her legend was etched.
To queen, demon revived.
A fell resurrection, unparalleled in this world or next.
Awaken, forsaken, by others soon taken as prey.
Now you shall stand in the grandeur of love,
a wonderland and in which to play.

The beast in the clouds spat back to moon,
and arrayed in a crown of glittering cobwebs,
she slid to her feet like a prophet of doom,
born to immortal darkness, as mortality slipped away.

She was a flame, divine.
My gnathic call of duty, irrefutable.
Her eyes imparadised me with their wicked shine,
A glimpse so achingly beautiful.

Now she stirs the night just like the perfect Lorelei,
as she spurs the dark horse foaming in my soul.
Death is fleet, sweet, oft discreet,
the beast in the beauty's mask.
Her skies, bediademed, complete, now freed of days grown overcast

4. Wester Vespertine

Today was spent in languor
Drifting through the fold
As midsummer vent its glamour
In cobbled streets a thousandfold

I bore cruelty from the sun
The jewelry that it hung
About me God it stung
Like life's betrayal

Now shadows lengthening
Hear the nightside sting
The promise of delightful things to come

Wester vespertine
When the sun is in decline

Reddened skies underlined in purple
Exemplify cries goodbyes are verbal

Bats carouse about the tree line
Daylight bows out, free and feline
And dusk comes so sublime
So wester vespertine

Feel the rush of power this magical hour
The heavens blaze their flames devour
The smoke of ruins black against
A bled horizon mystic incensed

Nightfall is dressed in fantasy

Ethereal the end of day enthralls
Voyeurs watching from the stalls
It enfolds the drear and drab
Lifts our heart to sheer romantic
Pyromantic necromantic heights
Of bright sensation

Feel the rush of power this magical hour
The heavens blaze the angels cower
Wisps of sulphur at my lips
The abyss at kissed fingertips

Nightfall is blessed with majesty

This night will see indictment
For my needs extol
The virtues of excitement
This soul reigns uncontrolled

Sweet scents, the vents of Mother Earth
Have lent to my rebirth
Her perfume is perverse
And that's the way I like it

Bethlem is opening
Her terrifying wings
The promise of its frightful things to sperse

Hesperus will shine
Out foremost as stars climb
And dusk comes so sublime
So wester vespertine

Feel the rush of power this magical hour
The moon invades the vestal bower
Gas lamps flicker in devotion
Like fireflies on an iron ocean

Nightfall is best left to telestic needs

Crepuscular
This theater is spurred
To drive the painted nails home
And let man's blithe desires roam
About the city lit to please
The pretty bits this august eve

Revive our sore and tortured souls
Revive my mortared soul

Toward the end
Toward the splendor
Like lot the host gives up its ghosts
His gorgeous daughters now surrender
Lammas glamour
Hammered in the dying light
Like a glowing hot saber set to clangour on the anvil
We'll bang destiny to rights now

Wester vespertine
This is our time to taste
To chase to embrace to lay waste to the vine
The cup of fornication is a decadent red wine

Wester vespertine
When the sun is in decline
Reddened skies underlined in purple
Exemplify cries, goodbyes are verbal

Bats carouse about the tree line
Daylight bows out free and feline
And dusk comes so sublime
So Wester Vespertine

5. The Seductiveness Of Decay

Silked like a ghost in infinite splendor
The moon illumes like a madness vendor
Lycanting hosts to a coarse surrender
Frightening most lest they offend her reign

Proletariat enslaved
In whoredom with Moloch
London run amok is Sodom bathed
In an eerie light and a sickening fog

This city is a beautiful spider
With a poison welling inside her
That subdues and loots her prey
A web to tarry souls compelling them to
Duly stray

Fantasmagoriana's on its way

This mist, carousing off the Thames
Its sallow tendrils bend
The will of many men
To morbid fascination

How the full asylums howl
With madness on the prowl
And all the maidens bow
To the skeletal
Squalor King Cholera
Here the age grows more unholier
Careered with fear
Beneath the veil of melancholia

Now the smoke stacks darken skies
The caress of death is on the rise
Its choking breath romanticized
And dressed in Gothic veneration

Funereal this bride
Wedded to the dead inside

Blackest magic, whithechapel paved
Penny bloods delight in
The tragic splay of rifled graves
And suicide spirit guides the circle is inviting

Evil dances under many guises
Pristine masks shadow terrible vices
Sins enhanced Lucifer entices near

Here the age grows more unholier
Careered with fear
Beneath the veil of melancholia

Now the smoke stacks darken skies
The caress of death is on the rise
Its choking breath romanticized
And dressed in greatest expectations
Thin wings lay on the ground
Bound for the pound
Of the beckoning reckoning

Infatuation with the mysterious
Frights are writing better chapter and verse
Intoxication hearts are not averse
To circus freaks and black waxworks

Those that the grace of god denied
Become divertissement to curb
The bitter taste from glittered lives
Modernity perturbs

Horror victorianorum

Syphilitic, spiritualistic
Rot is set to stay
Phantasmogenic psychogenic
Sotted minds are bled away

Behind the rind of imperialistic overall
Industrious teeth sank deep into the red map
Workhouses grist for satanic treadmills
Spew offspring back intact
In fact far closer to collapse
And the pooling lamp of science in defiance of the lord
Its hallowed tallow burning with discord
Is born of midnight trysts with resurrectionists
Body snatchers child catchers
The Necropolis built on top of this
Is an Empire fit for ghouls

Is an empire fit for ghouls

Here the age grows more unholier
Careered with fear
Beneath the veil of melancholia

Now the smoke stack darken skies
The caress of death is on the rise
Its choking breath romanticized
And dressed in chocked abomination
Aberration
A mourning nation cries

6. Vengeful Spirit

A storm to break steeples is nigh
I feel it in my deviant pathology
The autumn leaves no longer sigh
But instead hiss a virulent cacophony

Stricken in the dead of night
Fear quickens me to flee or fight
This otherworldly parasite
Who stalks my very dreams

Sickened by this atmosphere
Blood's slickening everything in here
Nightmares are liars to commandeer
And furnish with my screams

She seeks control
So disaster will follow me
Please free my soul
Before her darkness can swallow me

I tasted betrayal
I was a fool
I will never relent
I am agony sent
Vengeance in the still hungry sights of a ghoul
The snow and roses
Of youth have passed away
Yet still she haunts me
In truth I stay her prey

Further down the habit hole
I fall feigning greater escapology
But drugs do nothing but extol
The here and now
And not her venomous ghostology

I was hers but chose
Another for my own
And everybody knows
Suicide is for the solo...

My loved ones swoon to her embrace
For them a tomb will soon encase
Their spilled remains the cursed chase
Begins for me afresh

Adverse Venus of these rites
Hearse of perverse appetites
Her thirst it worsens and invites
A creeping of the flesh
She seeks control
So disaster will follow me
Please free my soul
Before her darkness can swallow me

I tasted betrayal
I was a fool
I will never relent
I am agony sent
Vengeance in the still hungry sights of a ghoul

I tasted betrayal
Misplaced and cruel
I will never relent
I am agony sent
Vengeance in the still hungry sights of a ghoul

In the still hungry sights of a ghoul

First a gelid whisper
Then the candlelight cavorts in sympathy
For where once it was murder to resist her
Paralysis of terror stills the urge to flee

The demon enters
Swathed in a fell bestiality
She this vengeful wraith tormentor
I pray the time has come for hell to set me free

7. You Will Know The Lion By His Claw

Purring, the sweet-tempered soughing
Of lucrative savannah winds,
Stirs the great flotsam of clouds that vowing to usher the evening in
Affecting the set of the reckoning sun
From burnished gold to crimson hue
Before this night is quite sorely undone
The devil is coming from you

Like a ghost haunting the darkness
Stalking the veldt
Where many kings were felled
A savage growling rakes this grassy vastness
Halting you in the tracks you've laid
To rule this fulsome world

Now silent as a wisp of smoke
Terror grips you by the throat
You will know the lion by his claw
Mistaking fake demeanor
Was your first and fatal flaw
Never will the hunter ever be the hunted here or evermore
Taking my arena
Brought this courted slaughter to your door

I am nature's great restorer
First order Carnivora
Fate and foe, no time to implore
Mercy for she has fled
Tail tucked between her legs
Circled prey, recant and beg
To me alone, this powder keg
Of teeth and jaws together
In a riot of adventure

I am Leonine and ten commandments
Cut deep for your death

Damnatio ad bestias
Damnatio ad bestias

Through limitless whispering seas
Of redolent tropical plains
Whereupon mystery's blistery frieze
A silvering gibbous moon reigns
Aggressive, obsessive to snuff out your lights
I come a cold virulent grue
Blighting your guides and delighting inside
On the pride that is tiding for you

As a beast feasting its hunger
Under the spell
Rifles and fire shall not repel
Industrious machinations rent asunder
No miring me in traps well-laid
I'll not pale to unveil my Hell

You will know the lion by his claw

This violence is a plague of flame
Licking the brush to flush out game
A bellow of rage caged in yellow eye
Sees evil life seized, unleashed reprisal

You will know the lion by his claw
Mistaking fake demeanor
Was your first and fatal flaw
Never will the hunter ever be the hunted here or evermore
Taking my arena
Brought this courted slaughter to your door

You will know the lion by his claw

Now hear the growing thunder roar

The walls of blackish thorn have fallen batterfang and chaos
Quick to marshal, maul the fools
Who stand by shattered loss

Your shadow scatters westward
Toward the fleeing stars
As a new dawn feeds upon the skies
Heraldic, rampant, battle-scarred

Damnatio ad bestias
Damnatio ad bestias

8. Death And The Maiden

I spy the spreading fear
That crawls worm-like beneath
This aging mask of time
That grasps to call itself belief

So down here in the valley of the shadow of death
To the best denomination I have taken her soul
To show just what faith-tested means

Never seen the sun
Never been undone
Never thought her feeble screams
Would court such fascination

Never in a thousand years

I am the lord of the bored underworld
Her hand is pleasured in mine
Together we will climb
Past the pearly constellations
A wealth of treasures to find

We'll fly crows of ill-omen
Across a leaden sky
To red squares of holy Roman
Catholicism in an eye
To deeply sow where sorrow rose
Having all tomorrows
For our wedded union to impose

The world in misery succumbs to frost

Without her here I'm lost
The seasons absorb the cost
Together our paths are crossed
Eros and Thanatos

One by one
Love's raised horns sound their sweet surrender
And one by one
Her defences fall, debris
My will be done
I shall storm the gates where fates defend her
And once I've won
Her heart will belong to me

I saw her there
Gathering despair
By the light of the moon
On the vale of Nysa

I walked the endless night
Before she pressed from me
The swallowed seed of winter's bite
Undressed Persephone
So down here in the shadow of the Vally of Kings
Let this sticky situation spur on fertility
Come be my perennial Queen

Never seen the sun
Never been undone
Never thought her velvet ports
Would wean such masturbations
Never in a thousand years

Without her here I'm lost
The seasons absorb the cost
Together our paths are crossed
Eros and Thanatos

One by one
Love's raised horns sound their sweet surrender
And one by one
Her defences fall debris
My will be done
I shall storm the gates where fates defend her
And once I've won
Her heart will belong to me

Hades
I've slept delightfully within these open arms
Plucked I'm a magnet to your charm
Lost in a skeletal dance

I rent the meadow's earth
To embed her as my bride
This wondrous light of life
That rights the wrongs I've breed inside

Her mouth no longer plaintive
Those lips no longer dry
We waltz the great halls naked
Candel-lit and oft obliged
To deeply sow where sorrow froze
Having all tomorrows
To bathe in the savored afterglow
To slave at the favoured crafts we know

9. The Night At Catafalque Manor

Lightning forked like a bifurcate tongue
Flickers on this wicked little pandemonium
Theatrical, the courted orchestra ripples
The tumult of the skies is alive and highly verbal

It plays for mass destruction

Frightening, the sight of darksome banners on the wind
Tumulus the cumulus, its drub of us begins
A galavanting army of tsunami-like decrees
Trees are edging backwards, I am lost to reverie

I wait, contemplating the fates to undress
Tonight is the night for the hands of doom to caress

This eve is enwreathed with sensation

My carriage appears like a fright through the storm
As bells from a distant church, tolling forlorn
Thrash out a tortuous path until dawn

Oh, the viciousness of this parade
The heavens have lit so exquisite a stage

I sense the stars up in arms
Their mercurial charms
Incensed by the liveried curtain

And hence my journey, pockmarked
By the Stygian dark
Is intense and delivered uncertain

This eve is in league with elation

As a gatehouse awaits in a shadowy lee
The foul tempest howls and then suddenly
Falls as silent as skulls set in lost ossuaries

Passed under the shrouded arches
The moon spills twixt clouded branches
And where it sits, the driveway blanches
Fixed aslant the hill

To the foot of Catafalque Manor
Silvered thus, it extends a glamour
Like Cinderella bared to dare enamour
My inner Gothic, thrilled

Exotic guests, coalesced, embark
Espied through windows on the park
To arrest my villainous heart
For it is amiss, yet yearning still

I pervade the ball
And glide amidst rich animals
So beautiful their prideful litters
Underneath chandeliers that glitter

Sanguine delights
In bright Victoriana
A Nirvana life bedights

In light of this I commend the
Host for his regalities
A toast I thus engender

But now, in a forest of glasses raised
And gazes held
I spy a face whose spell
One would race through blazing Hell for

I must confess
I came here for the game
For the scent of death
But never did I foresee heaven torn asunder
By a seraph who would steal its thunder

My ardour awakened is taken by force
I ask for a dance, a chance for discourse
She bats me a glance and love strikes like a scorpion

We play for mass corruption

She waits, contemplating her fate to address
Tonight is the night for the hands of doom to caress

This Eve is besieged by temptation

The flames in her eyes catch these mad butterflies
They burst into blossoms well-versed to imply
This girl, non pareil, is a nymph in disguise

Oh, the viciousness of this parade
The heavens have lit so exquisite a stage

We pass through the throng
Heedless and headlong
Possessed by the gathering maelstrom

By her talents impressed
And the swell of breast
Obsessed, I am halfway to Hell gone

This Eve is enwreathed in sensation

As the tempest renews in the turbulent heights
We fake our excuses, soon to take flight
Forever to wake and remember this night

The night at Catafalque Manor

10. Alison Hell

[originally by Annihilator]

Alice, isn't it frightening?
Alice, aren't you scared?
Alice, isn't it wonderful?
Living life afraid
Don't look around the corner
I might be lurking there
Under the bed at night
You're up 'til dawn again

Alison hell, your mind begins to fold
Alison hell, aren't you growing cold?
Alison hell, you are looking blue
Alice in hell, what else can you do?

Alice

I begin my rule, life hideous in your mind
Crying out, you've lost your doll
It isn't worth a dime

Alison hell, your mind begins to fold
Alison hell, aren't you growing cold?
Alison hell, what are you looking for?
Alice in hell, soon I close the door

Sitting in the corner, you are naked and alone
No one listened to your fears, you've created me

Alice, isn't it frightening?
Alice, aren't you scared?
I was killed at birth
I shoot this final scene
You're in the basement
You're trapped insanity

Alison hell, what were you looking for?
Alison hell, as I close the door
Alison hell, here you shall dwell
Alison hell, Alice dwells in hell

Alice

Alice
Alison
Alice
In hell

Goodbye







CRADLE OF FILTH LYRICS