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CRADLE OF FILTH LYRICS
"Mannequin" (2003 Single)
1. The Promise of Fever (live performance)
2. Mannequin (full version)
3. Babalon A.D.
4. Serpent Tongue Animation
5. Bonus Features
1. The Promise of Fever (live performance)
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)
From 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 His
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 morningstar
Shared His pride and deep inside
Felt chill shadows sweep their cards
2. Mannequin (full version)
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 the 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…
3. Babalon A.D.
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 knot 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 a 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, foe 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
4. Serpent Tongue Animation
5. Bonus Features
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