1. |
Sunset on the Apocalypse
05:31
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|
The jaws of Apollyon drew nigh
Clenched with the fury of undone retribution
A terrible shade coiled the sky above
Gripping those who gazed upward with fear
'Twas a wretched, beguiling tumult
Inducing the beleaguered lost to dance
Spinning in a maddening frenzy
To a dionysiac rite long since forgotten
The sun, cloaked in red, set on the horizon
Resplendent with primeval majesty
This ancient crimson luminary
Once more taking its bow
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2. |
Sunrise on the Wastes
06:55
|
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|
Life smells sweet in the groves of joyful Spring
The warm air drifts over birth and rebirth
A sleepy, slow moving display of mirth
Yet a dark conceit doth this season bring
Its cruel naïveté veils dearly well
The on-rushing finality of death
The cold, harsh loneliness of Winter's breath
Which, once realized, break the contumely spell
Now the luster of the landscape is gone
For this wary traveler sees with his eyes
That the thin, green veneer no longer hides
The barren earth visible in the dawn
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3. |
Blackened Myrrh
06:46
|
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|
Smoke billows in the small valley below:
The woods are alight with a blazing fire
As the seeds of vengeance evermore grow;
Nature's destruction doth our deeds require
And so,
Through the black leaves
Does the ashen wind come
On eaves before midnight
Are hopes objects to shun
Near the thick roots' grip
Is the earth succumb to Hell
Before the black dawn
Sounds an ominous knell
Within the wooden deep
Is knowledge withheld
And in this black forest
Is death beheld
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4. |
Interlūdium I
01:42
|
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5. |
Homo homini lupus
03:35
|
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|
The wolves are out for prey
Searching in the acid rain
The pale damp corpses
Of those who've lost their way
Hunting the sodden land
Muddied and demure
Their eyes pierce like daggers
Watching the folly of the damned
Man is a wolf to man
A beast like no other
Man is a wolf to man
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6. |
||||
|
Behind the world of illusion
Lies the primordial substance
An immeasurable, starless menace
Gleaming from the light
Of its own doomed creation
The self-activity of a blind drive
Silence bores a hole
Into the wall of Maya
Yielding as it crumbles
The shiver of mental disquiet;
To know is to feel
To feel is to fear
Witness, fellow wanderer,
In the shadow of a fading light,
Oblivion's antechamber,
The kernel of existence
A rapture of unending conception
Cursed and alone
Nature is bashful, its teeth unseen
Resign, lest its fangs reach you
And devour you
For oblivion's shadow
Cannot reach into the calm
Abode of resignation
|
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7. |
The Weight of Remorse
05:05
|
|||
|
Heavy limbs
And the impression of guilt
The marks of an old soul
To move without wanting to
To speak without meaning to
To hear without caring to
To see without wishing to
To taste without craving to
Serving the sentence
For the crime of Adam:
To exist without needing to
|
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8. |
The Levity of Despair
06:41
|
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|
Hope and purpose
Ephemeral, slip
From the grasp
Of mortal man;
Forever sent to
The fires of despair
But still he yearns
For the flames
To be quenched;
His life in parts
A comedy resembles;
The whole a tragedy
All however is
Vanity, senseless
And most obscure;
Thence is laughter
Without arrogance
The levity of despair
|
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9. |
Interlūdium II
01:55
|
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10. |
Scala Paradisi
07:41
|
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|
Scale the ladder of the divine
And images born of knowledge
Sink ever by, the slow fading
Of past desires now quieted
Divine it is called by the ancient
Pilgrims, but there are no gods
To aid this climb, for above hovers
The thick cloud of unknowing
Below lies a tumultuous expanse
Churning in every direction
An aimless kaleidoscope
Of patterns mirrored eternally
Life, effervescent in its squalor
And hubris, hurriedly spurns
This advance, clinging to
Its empty temples of deceit
|
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11. |
Algor mortis
08:41
|
|||
|
Before the precipice
A chill was felt
And questions heard:
'What means all this?
From what arose such
A calamity? I venture
To know,' said a man
Sitting atop his crystalline
Pillar, with a conch in
One hand and a lotus in
The other; quoth the man:
'From savage conceit do these actions spring,
Affectioned men who to power must cling;
Yet their arrival is not a surprise
As these analogies hope to devise:
The cycle of life doth the planet's reflect:
For ne'er can it wander from nor neglect
Attending its course to the letter;
So life's history repeats forever,
Just as around the fixed, lutescent Sun
Has the cerulean Earth always spun;
So too in the snow one leaves prints in vain,
For Winter's storms shall e'er come again;
Thus in the future it may come to pass
That our fragile dreams will shatter like glass'
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12. |
The Long Dark
10:18
|
|||
|
We are each one of us born in darkness
And thence shall we disbelievingly go
When life's delicate flickering brightness
Ceases finally and for all time to glow
The world presents itself as a riddle
The somber solution to which is will;
Life withers away and mountains shrivel
As it seeks only its desires to fulfill
Never is it totally satisfied,
Leaving pain and misery as its mark;
To overcome willing some have tried
But none can halt the march of the Long Dark
|
||||
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