"A Gothic Romance" lyrics - CRADLE OF FILTH

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 breath
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 overture
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 tomb...

But poisoned nectar within me 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 death 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 upon 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 waters
Rent by my lips I cherish most

Awash on her perfidious shored
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 echos bloodless and incensed...

Doth temptation prowl the earth seducing the weak
Did not the Queen of Heaven come a 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
Erobed in Death's shadow like a swifter silhouette...