CRADLE OF FILTH LYRICS

1. Macabre, This Banquet

[Instrumental]

2. Nocturnal Supremacy

Weak midnight promises of love,
were wept upon her grave and shunned by stars above.
In mortal life lurks my dismay.
An Angel stole my heart and Death took her away.

She sleeps beyond the grace of God,
a dreaming beauty.
If wishes could only fray that bond,
the dead would sing for me.

Twelfth moon arose with ghostly voice,
a poet's serenade.
Her name a whisper upon my lips and lo,
Rorasa came!

Fear me not my grieving king,
funereal in breath.
The secrets of the dark I know,
and thus, we shall cheat Death.

My promises wrought though despondence that night,
have delivered me gifts from the grave.
Rorasa enshadowed and eternal life,
never a Devil so vain.

The Angel is fallen, for I thought her lost,
and no heaven would silence the pain.
Teach me these secrets, the sensual frost,
desire for warm blood again.

Dark nature clasp my soul,
around her throat mine arms enfold.
To sleep, perchance to dream,
and then to dusk and flesh ascend.

The sun descends, magenta spirits fill the skies,
and wreak erotic maladies where sex and Death abide.
From writhing tides where gothick siren weave their song to shore.
Through the ashes of the battlefields where ravens and angels war.

As phantoms we have fled the basilisk of day,
to rise as phoenix taloned, nightly taking prey.

We rule like the red and risen moon upon the sea.
The stars of judgement silent, for we share joyous eternity.

Damnation!
Salvation!
Stigmata plague!

The wine of Bacchus flows.
Listen to the thunder rage!

Deceivers dragged before their cross!
I am he that vanquished Death and bore the sting of loss.
What vulgar Christ will unprise my grasp?
His temple, ruined, burns and sweet Rorasa laughs.

[Guitar solo]

I am enamoured and imparadised,
to catch the fires dancing profanely in her eyes.
I will crush them all if this holds thy delight.
Rather dead forever than to lose her.
Nymph-lascivious Aphrodite!

3. Heaven Torn Asunder

Rise crepuscular
Devildom voyeurs
Rise towards the light
Nascent aeons confer

The noose of revelation
Tightens 'pon misdeed
And the serpent of truth
Eats the nomad destiny

Vast shadows gather
In penumbral reign
Blind masses bring the jury of chaos
Poised to sodomize the human world back

Supernal curtains hang tattered
As others feast on the loss of command
Vengeance climbs Babel's ivory tower
Masturbated by a Cretan priestess

Victory spent
Breathe deep benighted scent

Seething fever demons gnaw in me
Like the tugging of my veins to feed
From sweet flowing waters of divinity
Millenniums turned black....

Attack!

Pour out our rages on those despised
Vulgar religion of the skies
Storm the citadels aloof upon the clouds
Erasing jealousies beneath eternal shrouds
Come lift thine eyes bedizened with delight

The fifth epoch is ours!

Artemis
Spread the lust of the dark Fantasia

Celebrate, renew the grave
The infidel soon unmasks her face

A crescent moon waxing forevermore
Sharpened to skewer dawn....

I am as a plague born unto darkness
The secret amour of an archangel's rape
A casualty when my mother, possessed
Cursed at the stake

Attack!

Pour out thy rages on those despised
Vulgar religion of the skies
Storm citadels aloof upon the clouds
We're erasing jealousies beneath eternal shrouds
Come lift thine eyes bedizened with delight

The fifth epoch is ours!

"The most asplendid sorcerers of Hades
Darkly seized for me a throne
And the upraised scythe so terribly scribed
vengeance in Jesuit blood on stone

From this ransacked celestial temple
I hold the prophet's severed head unto all nations"

Tremble before us
Lords of the star-veiled red sepulchres
Rushing deathwards, our Tartarean fires
Kindle pandemonia to furnace the earth

"Our voices are opened graves,
Through which the never-dead escape"

From deep abyssic dream
Pursuing ascendancy....

The noose of revelation
Tightens 'pon misdeed
And the serpent of truth
Eats the nomad destiny

Vast shadows gather
In penumbral reign
Blind masses bring the jury of chaos
Poised to sodomize the human world back

Supernal curtains hang tattered
As others feast on the loss of command
Vengeance climbs Babel's ivory tower
Masturbated by a Cretan priestess

The enemy has held three seasons
Imparadised, whilst we writhed
To psycho-dramas penned by aerial decree
Now freed to plunder....

Heaven torn asunder

4. Dusk... And Her Embrace

When the moonlight sleeps upon the waveless lake
And the mists steal in with ease
The children of the night may sing
But I will call to thee

"I will call to thee...."

Encroaching evening skies die with such tragedy
And the dead in their graves dwell on pleasures to be
In deepes Styria where our legend still breathes
Thou has murmured my name as the wind through the trees

And I will come, as if in dream
My languid, dark and lustrous Malaresian Queen,
Of noble love fatale
An eager guillotine
Erishkigal, raven-haired
Thy seduction haunts the castle in erotic despair
I know thy scent by candlelight
Immortal flesh I yearn to share
Excite my greed on spattered sheets
Dyed unearthly red as sobriety weeps

Nocternity.... She shall come for me

A black velvet painting sprung to elegant life
Like a poignant Madonna perverted to night
And I have ridden from the westerning light
To expend my lust
Tear away the funereal dress
Know that I will escape from my death
Surrendered to the splendour of her sharpened caress

Lo! The pale moonlight
Weaves a poetic spell of vital death and decline
Of mist and moth and the hunger inside
Kisses took to fever and the fever, demise

"Through twilight, darkness and moonrise
My scarlet tears will run
As stolen blood and whispered love
Of fantasies undone"

Countess swathed in ebony
And snow-white balletic grace
Ruby lips procure the wish
For dusk and her embrace

Dusk and her embrace

We shall flit through the shadows,
Like a dream of (were)wolves in the snow
Consumed with ardour
A romance that ever unfolds

Beneath the stars death bedevils me
"Beneath the stars taste the death in me"
Evil is a fiery wish to sever thin mortality

The candlelight flickers
Under the deadly nightshade
Together insane
Screaming through nails of pain

Elizabeth
My heart is thine
Thy fragrant words
Warm within like wine....

"Sexual dusk allure
With asphodel eyes
Moon-glancing maleficia
Enflame the tides"

And I will come, as if in dream
My languid, dark and lustrous Malaresian Queen,
Of noble love fatale
An eager guillotine
Erishkigal, raven-haired
Thy seduction haunts the castle in erotic despair
I know thy scent by candlelight
Immortal flesh I yearn to share
Excite my greed on spattered sheets
Dyed unearthly red as sobriety weeps

Nocternity, She shall come for me....

Unfurl thy limbs breathless succubus
The full ebmossomed fog
Imparts the night to us....

5. A Gothic Romance

Evening minuetto in a castle by the sea
A jewel more precious than the moon
lowered Her mask to me.
The sublimest creature the God of desire
Would dream about making his Queen
Drowning the air with Promethean Fire
And my heart burned with dark poetry

I fell in love with Her
Scent and feline lure,
And woodland eyes, that ushered in the impurest
Erotic, laden fantasies amid this warm Autumn night
I lulled her away from the rich masquerade
And together we kissed in the bloodletting moonlight

Oh Luna, what spell didst thou cast on me?
Her icy kiss fervoured my neck
Like whispering waves 'pon Acheron's beach.
In a whirl of dark voices and statues
That phantomed the dying trees.
This debauched seducer in black, loved me....

In a pale azured dawn like Ligeia reborn
I woke free of my sleep-sepulchre
On the sea misted lawn where stone figures, forlorn
Lamented the spectre of her
Bewildered and weak, yet with passion replete
I longed for the past overtures
The curse of unrest and her lingered caress
Seemed much more than my soul could endure....

I at once endeavoured to see her again
Lest my heart came palsied
Without even mouthing her name
On a thin precipice over carnal abyss
I danced like a blind acolyte
Drunk on red wine, her dead lips on mine
Suffused with the perfume of night

For hours I scoured the castle grounds
In vain for us to meet
When storm clouds broke, ashened, fatigued
I sought refuge in a cemetery

Sleep, usher dreams
Taint to nightmares from a sunless nether

Mistress of the dark
I now know what thou art

Screams haunt my sleep
dragged from nightmares thou hast wed together

Lamia and Lemures
Spawned thee leche
To snare my flesh

Portrait of the Dead Countess

Deep stained pain that I had dreamt
Flaunted Death's cold punishment
Leaving strength to seal this
Wretched tom

But poised nectar within my stirs
Up feverous desire and morbid purpose to search
Through cobwebbed drapery to where she swoons
Goddess of the graveyard, of the tempest and moon
In flawless fatal beauty her very visage compels
Glimpses of a heaven where ghost company fell
To mourning the loss of God in blackest velvet
Enrobed in their downfall like a swift silhouette

"Fleeting, enshadowed
Thou art privy to my sin
Secrets dead, wouldst thou inflict
The cruel daylights upon my skin?
Dost thou not want to worship me
With crimson sacrifice
So my cunt may twitch against thy kiss
And weep with new-found life?"

My realm in dusk
Torn to her embrace

Dark angels taste my tears
And whisper haunting requiems
Softly to mine ear
Need-fires have lured abominations here....

Nocturnal pulse
My veins spill forth their water
Rent by lips I cherish most

Awash on her perfidious shores
Where drowning shadows o'er the stars
Ebon's graves where lovers whore
Seraphim and Nahemah

"Nahemah"

Pluck out mine eyes, hasten, attest
Blind reason against thee, Enchantress
For I must know, art thou not death?
My heart echoes bloodless and incensed....

Doth temptation prowl the earth seducing the weak
Did not the Queen of Heaven come as Devil to me?
On that fatal Hallow's Eve when we fled company
as the music swept around us in the crisp, fallen leaves
Under horned Diana where her bloodline was sewn
In a graveyard of Angels rent in cool marbled stone
I am grieving the loss of life in sombre velvet
Enrobed in Death's shadow like a swifter silhouette....

6. The Graveyard By Moonlight

[Instrumental]

7. Funeral In Carpathia

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 surreptitiously to kill

Lucretia, I drain thy veins
Thy tears are sweeter than the mountain rain
Bewinged, infested belfries
Toll o'er the sobbing throng
A writhe of lethargic, terrored nudes
Dance to my tortuous song

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 lies deep
And jagged ramparts wed the moonlit sky
I shrug off the shroud of preternatural sleep
Embroidered by these words Malaresia scribed....

"Beauty slept and angels wept
For her immortal soul
In this repose, these Devils chose
To claim her for their very own"

Carpathia ~ The dead shall speak of her
In graveyard tongue where pack wolves run
Blood red mist seeps across the sun

Never leave me....

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

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

Carpathia ~ Nature has long incurred
The trees to weave the cold fog like thread
Across the path the righteous tread

I rule as Master here
Where cruel winds impart my temper
Love sank wounded when I, betrayed
Saw Death etch cruelly, upon my lineage

"Arise panthered Draconis
And commit this world to thy ancient sovereignty"

Erubescent veil descend
Eclipse without an end
And legacies blessed with darkness
Forever more

Supreme vampiric evil

This wintry eve when the snow lies deep
And jagged ramparts wed the moonlit sky
I shrug off the shroud of preternatural sleep
Embroidered by these words Malaresia scribed....

"Beauty slept and angels wept
For her immortal soul
In this repose, these Devils chose
To claim her for their very own"

Carpathia ~ The dead still speak of her
In graveyard tongue where wolf packs run
Blood red mist sweeps across the sun

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 surreptitiously to kill

8. Beauty Slept In Sodom

Death, spirit me away
My anguished soul doth strain
On taut and twisted reins
Yet, insatiate I remain
A proud, unfallen star
That dares thee from afar
To calm my thund'rous heart
Yet rend it's knot apart

So I may never sing
Of red skies o'er my strings
And love, a wanton thing
Can plunge on burnt, black wings
To hang amid the thorns
Scarlet like velvet worn
About the cloud-wracked moon
Who wanes in solitude....

I am alone
Thirsting for the dark
That breathes beneath the stone
What black witchcraft
Shall cast me from thy dreams
And what perverse world-strategy
Will crawl with thee from sleep?

"Rouse my disease
And with cadent naked dance I shalt teach
Thee wisdom of darkness
From earth and red sea

Lightbearing Samael
Coalesce with me...."

Twilight
Through frosted gates
Entwining shadows of the snake
By candlelight
Thanateros rites
Death seduced and chaos wakes

Obsession grips, blindragon fever
In throes of scythed orgasm, Eros dies
And Saturn rapes faith's lovelorn Diva
Upon a cyprean altar
Stripped bare for sacrifice

Virtue births a demon
Pandora's box, unhinged, sets loose the night
Winged Lilith born for want of Eden
Fanning plumes of harlotry
Like pearls before the desert swine

In time, the oceans parts
Storm as a Kraken
Reborn Venus as thou art
Feeding at my banquet
Of Saturnalia.
I call thee having wrestled
The tides from lonely Diana

"For thee Endymion,
I forsake the cerements
Of this star-flung tomb"

Be-with-us, come
Unveil the ancient flame
Throw the cats our enemies
Desire's menstrual strain
Eastern Devil eyes
A cruel erotic plague
The Shekhina is in exile
And the Israelites.... enslaved

Midnight
Jerusalem
A tenebrous phantasy
Revelates to men
Their celestial walls crumble
When walks the Xul
Born to the scarlet whore in Babylon

9. The Haunted Shores Of Avalon

Herodias and I have led a phantom cavalcade
Through veiled romantic history where superstitions reigned
And Christendom sought to pervert, but poets of my name
Sang of penumbral victories that sorcery had claimed
The Graal and mighty Caliburn as votive offerings
To an England rearisen under vast prophetic wings

These are the shores where to my soul
Blood-drenched and unredeemed
Shalt seek solace in secrets told
And tranquil as a dream

From the woods Pendragon-born, I rose Arcturius
A proud and mighty king robed in the chivalry of lust
Death and fate undaunted me, I drew a throne divided
Glorious the battles won Black Adraste provided
Then treachery, a wingless beast, came crawling to my court
And now I lie at cursed Camlann, from wounds a traitor wrought

From wounds a traitor wrought....

I fear the Augean light is gutting Camelot
How bittersweet my triumphs seem
Now Autumnal dreams succumb to frost
Morganna art thou near me?
My strength wilts near a grave
Cast my sword to the sylphid grasp
Of the Naiad 'neath the silvered lake

When waters stirred lay silent
Mistress let the mists descend
Thy tears cannot thaw Death's cold heart
His sombre gaze defies legend
More so than thine lest thy dew-lidded eyes
Art for the Banshee's song.
Or our souls entwined like vein upon
The haunted shores of Avalon

The haunted shores of Avalon

I greet thee Dark Immortals
On this isle 'neath the moon
Why hast our kingdom fallen
To the enemy so soon
Let loose the hounds of darksome night
To pillage, plague and burn
As slumber lures me 'mongst the dead
To scheme of my return

Archaic ghostly echoes breathe like thunder of the storm
A tempest fools miscall divine as they crouch awaiting dawn
Their ignorance has forged for me over centuries a sword
Burnished to flash like lightning on the precipice of war
The wolves are dead in Albion whilst the passive flocks roam free
Thus my penetrant spearhead shalt pierce these foul trespassing breeds

These are the shores where to my soul
Blood drenched and unredeemed
Shalt seek solace in secrets told
And tranquil as a dream

"I have awoken from the past
Lenghening the shadows
Over England's bitter scars
I prize wide the wounds
Her soils whetted, drink
Remember me as king
When I cradle elder stars
Like lovers in my arms
Nestled vipers to my breast
Venomed forces work these cards
Of Devils and priestess....
Thus I shall rule anew
Through sinews of a song
Played upon a storm
By the ghosts of Avalon
And all in league will bow to me
From death they shall ascend
To whisper winds of war to stir
The dark-one-thing in men

The Principle '95
Black Metal masterplan...."

10. Carmilla's Masque

[Instrumental]

11. A Gothic Romance (Demo)

[Bonus Track]

Evening minuetto in a castle by the sea
A jewel more precious than the moon
lowered Her mask to me.
The sublimest creature the God of desire
Would dream about making his Queen
Drowning the air with Promethean Fire
And my heart burned with dark poetry

I fell in love with Her
Scent and feline lure,
And woodland eyes, that ushered in the impurest
Erotic, laden fantasies amid this warm Autumn night
I lulled her away from the rich masquerade
And together we kissed in the bloodletting moonlight

Oh Luna, what spell didst thou cast on me?
Her icy kiss fervoured my neck
Like whispering waves 'pon Acheron's beach.
In a whirl of dark voices and statues
That phantomed the dying trees.
This debauched seducer in black, loved me....

In a pale azured dawn like Ligeia reborn
I woke free of my sleep-sepulchre
On the sea misted lawn where stone figures, forlorn
Lamented the spectre of her
Bewildered and weak, yet with passion replete
I longed for the past overtures
The curse of unrest and her lingered caress
Seemed much more than my soul could endure....

I at once endeavoured to see her again
Lest my heart came palsied
Without even mouthing her name
On a thin precipice over carnal abyss
I danced like a blind acolyte
Drunk on red wine, her dead lips on mine
Suffused with the perfume of night

For hours I scoured the castle grounds
In vain for us to meet
When storm clouds broke, ashened, fatigued
I sought refuge in a cemetery

Sleep, usher dreams
Taint to nightmares from a sunless nether

Mistress of the dark
I now know what thou art

Screams haunt my sleep
dragged from nightmares thou hast wed together

Lamia and Lemures
Spawned thee leche
To snare my flesh

Portrait of the Dead Countess

Deep stained pain that I had dreamt
Flaunted Death's cold punishment
Leaving strength to seal this
Wretched tom

But poised nectar within my stirs
Up feverous desire and morbid purpose to search
Through cobwebbed drapery to where she swoons
Goddess of the graveyard, of the tempest and moon
In flawless fatal beauty her very visage compels
Glimpses of a heaven where ghost company fell
To mourning the loss of God in blackest velvet
Enrobed in their downfall like a swift silhouette

"Fleeting, enshadowed
Thou art privy to my sin
Secrets dead, wouldst thou inflict
The cruel daylights upon my skin?
Dost thou not want to worship me
With crimson sacrifice
So my cunt may twitch against thy kiss
And weep with new-found life?"

My realm in dusk
Torn to her embrace

Dark angels taste my tears
And whisper haunting requiems
Softly to mine ear
Need-fires have lured abominations here....

Nocturnal pulse
My veins spill forth their water
Rent by lips I cherish most

Awash on her perfidious shores
Where drowning shadows o'er the stars
Ebon's graves where lovers whore
Seraphim and Nahemah

"Nahemah"

Pluck out mine eyes, hasten, attest
Blind reason against thee, Enchantress
For I must know, art thou not death?
My heart echoes bloodless and incensed....

Doth temptation prowl the earth seducing the weak
Did not the Queen of Heaven come as Devil to me?
On that fatal Hallow's Eve when we fled company
as the music swept around us in the crisp, fallen leaves
Under horned Diana where her bloodline was sewn
In a graveyard of Angels rent in cool marbled stone
I am grieving the loss of life in sombre velvet
Enrobed in Death's shadow like a swifter silhouette....







CRADLE OF FILTH LYRICS