Cradle Of Filth - Damnation And A Day

CRADLE OF FILTH

DAMNATION AND A DAY (2003)

  1. A Bruise Upon The Silent Moon
  2. The Promise Of Fever
  3. Hurt And Virtue
  4. An Enemy Led The Tempest
  5. Damned In Any Language
  6. Better To Reign In Hell
  7. Serpent Tongue
  8. Carrion
  9. The Mordant Liquor Of Tears
10. Presents Form The Poison Hearted
11. Doberman Pharaoh
12. Babalon A.D.
13. A Scarlet Witch Lit The Season
14. Mannequin
15. Thank God For The Suffering
16. The Smoke Of Her Burning
17. End Of Daze

CRADLE OF FILTH

DAMNATION AND A DAY

1. A BRUISE UPON THE SILENT MOON

And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep...

2. THE PROMISE OF FEVER

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

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 with thoughts adrift
Until at last, past grasping trees
He paused to draught forbidden streams
That whispered siren promises
To drown his thirst

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 morningstar
Shared his pride and deep inside
Felt chill shadows sweep their cards.

3. HURT AND VIRTUE

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, 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 the 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 judgement
Am I not free, as he to indulge my darkest fantasies?

From embittered lips
These words were slaved
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 the 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
Stung like guilt in every.

4. AN ENEMY LED THE TEMPEST

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 throats 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
And 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
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: that fool was me

Alone and cold, face to the crack
Beyond 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 snakes
Snaked about his upraised fingers.

5. DAMNED IN ANY LANGUAGE (A PLAQUE ON WORDS)

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)

6. BETTER TO REIGN IN HELL

Better to reign in hell

Better to reign in hell

Heart in hand passed the clasp of pain
In the dark lowland that set bad blood in veins
Burning, like penal fires roused to stain
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

Better to reign in hell

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 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

Better to reign in hell

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 to reign in hell"

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

Better to reign in hell

Drowning out the past
Fool fates unwound cruel yesterdays
Beneath the stars
That staggered from the blast.

  7. SERPENT TONGUE

      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
For fearing her who grasped, he slit
Her throat from ear to where she fled
With tail and blood between her legs

      PART II

So very kept was the virgin hand
That brushed the treasures of Utopia
And how 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 intrigue 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
Paradise
Paradise

Paradise
Paradise
Paradise
Paradise.

8. CARRION

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 behest 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
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 f 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)

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

The deep red welt to domination

The deep red welt to domination.

9. THE MORDANT LIQUOR OF TEARS
Instrumental

10. PRESENTS FORM THE POISON HEARTED

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 one
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 a war with a heaven
I could not see
Beyond my wildest fantasies

Throwing sixes over deadly sin
I traded those 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
More I held control.

11. DOBERMAN PHARAOH

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 moonbeams vied
The painted eye of the royal bride
Whose gliding curves were deified
Beyond her grace where love would die
Destiny arrives

Back and forth the prophet came
Riddled with a tongue of plagues
That would render mighty 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
As 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 warred with every tribe that plied
In holy vestment, 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.

12. BABALON A.D. (SO GLAD FOR THE MADNESS)

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 day
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

So glad for the madness

I walked the walls naked to the moon
In Sodom and Babalon
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 live bait for the dead

And as I broke hope, I choked
Another pope with manna peel
Dictating to De Sade
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 a shawl
A razor's edge to the rule
That the stars overall
Were never destined to last

So glad for the madness

So glad for the madness

I furnaced dreams, a poet, full 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 in between

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 setting 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

So glad for the madness.

13. A SCARLET WITCH LIT THE SEASON
Instrumental

14. MANNEQUIN

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

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

Be my
Be my
Be my mannequin

Be my mannequin

Be my
Be my
Be my mannequin.

15. THANK GOD FOR THE SUFFERING

I, I still recall, the first full moon 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 a 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 full moon 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 dwindled across my stage
Lit up once more to score finales started

Love would have conquered all
Love would have conquered

I thank God for the suffering.

16. THE SMOKE OF HER BURNING

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 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 dreams of nymphs and men
But now the nightmares come again

Now the nightmares come again.

17. END OF DAZE

And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

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