Text: Cradle Of Filth. Bathory Aria (eyes That Witnessed Madness).

In an age crucified by the nails of faith
When rank scarecrows of christ blighted lands
An aloof Countess born an obsidian wraith
Dared the abyss knowing well She was damned
Her life whispered grief like a funeral march
Twisted and yearning, obsessed an entranced
With those succumbing to cruelty
Crushed 'neath the gait of Her dance
A whirlwind of fire that swept through the briers
Of sweet rose Her thickets of black thorn had grasped...

She demanded the Heavens and forever to glean
The elixir of Youth from the pure
Whilst Her lesbian fantasies
Reamed to extremes
O'er decades unleashed
Came for blood's silken cure

But Her reign ended swiftly
For Dark Gods dreamt too deep
To heed Her pleas

When Her gaolers were assailed
With condemnations from a priest
Who'd stammered rites
In the dead of night
For maidens staining winding sheets

And She postured proud
When Her crimes were trowelled
And jezebelled to peasant lips
Though She smelt the fires
That licked limbs higher

To the tortured cunts of accomplices

So ends this twisted fable's worth
And though spared the pyre's bite
By dint of nobled bloodlined birth
Her sins [crimes] garnered Her no respite

Forever severed from the thrill of coming night
Where slow Death alone could grant Her flight

"The Spirits have all but fled judgement
I rot, alone, insane,
Where the forest whispers puce laments for me
From amidst the pine and wreathed wolfsbane
Beyond these walls, wherein condemned
To the gloom of an austere tomb
I pace with feral madness sent
Through the pale beams of a guiltless moon
Who, bereft of necrologies, thus
Commands creation over the earth
Whilst I resign my lips to death
A slow cold kiss that chides rebirth
Though one last wish is bequathed by fate
My beauty shalt wilt, unseen
Save for twin black eyes that shalt come to take
My soul to peace or Hell for company"

My soul to Hell for company