CRADLE OF FILTH – Thank God For The Suffering

From the album Damnation and a Day (2003)

Suffering opens our eyes, helps us to see what we would not have seen otherwise. Hence it is useful only to knowledge and, except for that, serves only to poison existence. Which, one may add in passing, favors knowledge further. “He has suffered—hence he has understood.” This is all we can say of a victim of disease, injustice, or of any kind of misfortune. Suffering improves no one (except those who were already good), it is forgotten as all things are forgotten, it does not enter into “humanity’s patrimony” nor preserve itself in any way at all—it wastes itself as everything is wasted. Once again, it serves only to open our eyes.

Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

I, I still recall, the first fullmoon 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 a 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 dwindles across my stage Lit up once more to score finales started

Love would have conquered all Love would have conquered Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate 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