1. CYCLE OF AGES

Cycle of ages

A soul within sustains the heavens
Yet we are dulled by our earthly limbs
Because of them we are moved by sorrow
Entombed with the limitations of sin

When the final day deserts us
And the plagues of body cease
Allayed in a world of darkness
Yet disturbed in eternal sleep

Stretched out on empty winds
The stains of life are wested away
Purged of our earthly bearing
In unsoiled ether the self soon fades

Through Elysium we are cost
Rejoining the cycle of the ages
Delivering to bleed again
And bestow meaning to white pages


2. DARKNESS PART I

Sleep
Death
Hilda, I meant go to sleep
Sleep is death

I had a dream, which was not all a dream
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air

Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light

And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts
The habitations of all things which dwell
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed

And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face
Happy were those which dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch

A fearful hope was all the world contained
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded...

...And the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black


3. ABSENT TWILIGHT

Winds chill as water chimes
Along an errant path in winter's time
My last abide unblessed
I am a sunrise of opened flesh

Repellent horrors I now behold
As the beginning of death unfolds
Overwhelmed with the transience
Of drifting between sorrow and death

Visions of clouds shaped of writhing flesh
Mocking the terror I express

Gleaming from the sunlight they veil
As their death-bestowed limbs flail

Awakened in absent twilight
Where visions and thoughts unite
No longer a slave to earthly pride
Unspoken truth my eternal bride

Purged of dying
I drift on silent wings

Like a forgotten remembrance
I am one with the absence


4. DARKNESS PART II

The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled
And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust

And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude

Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food
And War, which for a moment was no more
Did glut himself again...

...A meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom...


No love was left

All...


5. BLEEDING OF THE HEART

(Instrumental)


6. DARKNESS PART III

All earth was but one thought-- and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon their entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh

The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
(For an) unholy usage

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend; the world was void

The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still...
Season-less, treeless
And nothing stirred within their silent depth...
Manless, lifeless
Darkness had no need of aid from them...

She was the Universe


7. REVEALER OF THE SHADOWS

The silver beauty of night fades
As darkness blankets forever
Clouds summoned by disarray
When beauty from night is severed

Bringer of the blackest blessings
Sound the knells of light's obsequy
Revealer of shadows within
Cast blank a sky marred by beauty

Howling winds flee from the North
Freezing closed night's gleaming eyes
Eerie melodies are flowing forth
To accompany these blackened skies

Into a skyless night
Where dying winds scream to me
Under a lightless moon
Beauty never again to be seen

A soft blackness
Encompasses me
A cloak of forgetfulness
Covering all I see

Bringer of the blackest blessings
Silence the knell's of light's obsequy

Mourning the vanished twilight
A descent into the abyss
Obscure and faceless
The semblance of oblivion exists


8. WATERS OF DESPAIR

Memories are nothing like the flesh
But semblances of nothingness
Deeds of the past unembraceable
A toil the mind so unescapable

Towards the black river's shore
The mist slowly dances forth
Treading in untrodden ways
Unseen beauty draped in dismay

From the waters of despair
My black thoughts suddenly turn clear

Replacing the veiled moonlight
A spectre of buried delight

Hair black as starlight's death
Drapes a spirit as pale as bloodless flesh

And if I lie with you
Beneath this darkened earth
Will not the last be forsaken
Just like the first

A whisper is nothing like the wind
But songs from forgotten strings
An airy nothing of lingering despair
Which haunts forever its captive's ears

From the waters of despair
Arises the past broken and austere

And if I lie with you
Beneath this darkened earth
Will not the last be forsaken
Just like the first


9. OUTRO

(Instrumental)