Fen - Winter
Original Version 2LP Version Boxset Version 1. Winter I (Pathway) 17:07 1. Winter I (Pathway) 17:07 1. Winter I (Pathway) 17:07 2. Winter II (Penance) 10:02 2. Winter II (Penance) 10:02 2. Winter II (Penance) 10:02 3. Winter III (Fear) 10:35 3. Winter III (Fear) 10:35 3. Winter III (Fear) 10:35 4. Winter IV (Interment) 14:51 4. Winter IV (Interment) 14:51 4. Winter IV (Interment) 14:51 5. Winter V (Death) 12:40 5. Winter V (Death) 12:40 5. Winter V (Death) 12:40 6. Winter VI (Sight) 9:43 6. Winter VI (Sight) 9:43 6. Winter VI (Sight) 9:43 --- Bonus Disk --- --- Bonus Disk --- 1. The Keening Soils 8:44 1. The Keening Soils 8:44 2. Sight (Reprise) 2:01 2. Sight (Reprise) 2:01 3. Penumbral Whispers 3:32 3. Penumbral Whispers 3:32 4. Temples Beyond the Shoreline 3:17 4. Temples Beyond the Shoreline 3:17 total time 74:58 total time 1:32:32 total time 1:32:32
1. I (Pathway) All will fall All will sink All will drown All will fade with time I scan the horizon Watching, waiting To gaze upon the grey spine of the cathedral spire Piercing the clouds that swathe this blasted horizon A totem of the permanence within this fog laden expanse Eternal I am, yet each tread On these desolate soils And through these banks of rearing sedge Enervate me ever further The ghostly breath of winter enshrouds Reaper - Harvester Scourer of essence The inevitable embrace whispers from an endpoint yet to be Rotten wings spread with a torpid snap A roiling howl that promises only a bouquet of woe Gathering in volume, a colossal choir builds Unearthly presence bleeds shadow over a broken landscape Mists unfurl in a tide of unspoken promises Supplicating embrace of ten thousand forgotten threnodies Yet I can hear them... each and every one Wordless these paeans to harrowed incarnation Silence Raised to a deafening roar that shreds the senses Eyes and ears forced shut, I revel in abnegation And let my soul-sense wander Slithering bent fingers of gelid ghostliness Probe the blackened slopes of that stoic island tomb or temple? Only the dead can know Their unrelenting mantra unveils naught save timeless prophecy And still... these wretched revenants whisper All will fall All will sink All will drown All will fade with time 2. II (Penance) Time That humiliating arbitrary adjudicator Your cruelty builds in an endless cycle of decrepitude Skin slackens with each passing seconds Flesh weakens and softens Bones stiffen in agony Dreams dissolve Hopes slough A blackened pulp of deepest despair A mind enfeebled and afraid Gazes back upon a path of waste and regret Gazes ahead only to t he cold and the empty All will fall All will fail All will fall All will fail And so with each heavy, broken-backed step I inch closer to my reckoning Sinews stiff, sloughing, sagging Resonating with slow decay like catgut strings Draped across a stave of rotting timber The cathedral looms... Tearing, oppressive, stentorian Cries once echoed in the chapels of cold stone Where cowled figures dripped with feverish piety And candles of reverence flickered in the torpid darkness of unanswered prayers Stoic monolith that bleeds black redemption Onyx shroud shed like skin Penance driven into the maw of the soil Stygian crust that chokes on the carcasses of the forgotten There is no room here Suffocation... Rejection... A hopeless soul slithers in vapid vestibules Echoes Silhouettes Fading notions of what once breathed false proclamations Granite shaped by the echoes of supplication Myriad visages gaze in judgement A solemn phalanx stands as one One singular totem of accusation Choral, somnolent striking the marrow Of a soul laced with corrosive regret Guilty - Pathetic - Cringing Crushed by stone Withering within the inquisition cloisters The last shreds of waning hope thus scatter I cannot see what lurks within these sepulchral shadows Emanating whispers of a thousand past condemnations One thousand past condemnations! Freezing hands reach - coiling, cloying My name is but dust And I flee again 3. III (Fear) The spirit songs scream across wind-burned heaths Flensing the rind of my very soul Corrosive embrace comforts In an inexorable miasma of dissolution A threnody that scours with the paralyzing raptor claws Of a lifetime of unrealized purpose And it as at this point that revelation strikes With the force of a thousand driven spear-points A face etched with the lexicon of destitution Stares back through pallid, jaundiced eyes That glitter with suppressed, shrieking desperation To rend To claw away the threads of cloying carnation To force this stooped sarcophagus Into the carcass-field beneath my feet Abnegation - silence - void The only triptych I seek Yet Extant not is thy solace Within this corrupted patina of deathsoil Still the Cathedral stands tall And in those febrile shadows Hopes of centuries shrivel and die I must move on I must haul this weary patchwork of cursive limbs Through a translucent mire Endless, oppressive wake Each tread summons the efforts of a thousand scouring exhalations Inch by inch, step by step, slowing, stooping Until - like a puppet with strings severed by the scythe of embitterment A figure collapses 4. IV (Interment) I descend I descend again I closed my eyes and still these vistas rend The waning sun... it's light so thing Sickly, these pale shafts press At a gruesome fog, an entangling torpor Stripping the fenland air of pellucidity Writhing chains of spiritual desolation reach And beckons a shattered soul back into darkness As the soils part in welcome A riven aperture to embrace a sundered spirit Closing like a withered fist Around a frond of pale tissue Weak - so very weak Cold - frozen to the marrow Encased by the frost of loathing I have nothing left to give Even my flesh presents naught A cross-stitched tapestry of past failings Pallid vessel of spiritual exsanguination Home to the dread-stare of these listless eyes Each sordid limb a tendril of pain A beacon of suffering, a spite of torment Aflame with gangrenous agony This hemisphere of decrepitude demands extinction Extinguish me Yearning for ending I beg for the embrace of the fens A final resting place - marked only by a henge of dead trees The cathedral stands, omniscient A memorial to all those who walked within these shadows Unmoved by the toil of the lost Who sink without markings into the fathomless murk 5. V (Death) And thus No headstone will mark our passing No mourners shall pay tribute No tithes to those who surrender to blackness No offerings for those entombed in this barren land The bells toll only within the strata of lost ages Earth, death, time and sorrow our parting hymns The circle has no end - our solace, no beginning Peace is only found in these unheralded, desolate kingdoms Withing the silence of the soils Amongst the mass grave of the forgotten Cemeteries forged in peat A cenotaph of bog oak Shivering flesh cupped in the shriveled claws of the fenland mausoleum Welcomed by a womb of cold earth Coiling like a foetus, I succumb to the silence Amputating the senses Embracing a well of oblivion I yearn to dissolve into the infinite Where past, present and future are bereft of meaning Where each echo of my torrid material self Drips slowly into a sink hole of desolation Where each reflection of the flesh Causes a tidal surge of misery A patchwork of memories floats before my mind's eye And it is with the gratitude of a lifetime I witness them fade Dissipating and drifting as morning mists Eradicated for all time I pray for nothingness My starved will craves void And in this stark cradle of dead fen-flesh I have found solace I have found my reward I have found release I have found my blessed death 6. VI (Sight) As if through a web of obsidian silk My sight returns as from a dream A dream empty of thoughts and sounds and visions And I remember it being one of the most beautiful places I had ever been I had never before that point known such peace A winter for the spirit, I was harvested of essence A place of endless solace placating this soul's corroded ruins Bereft of flesh, divorced of earth, severed of being And now I can drift once again but soaring free I can look down upon all I once know - all I once was And see with the cold, crystalline clarity of the dead Through eyes unmisted, a mind unfogged, free of the oppressive weight Of the cathedral's dead stone Of this body's withered flesh Of this mind's shattered synapses I didn't think such a quiet was possible That the relentless roil of rage and despair thrumming like lava through me Could be extinguished And given over to a plateau of calm stillness I embrace this season of ending With every fiber of my departing consciousness Frozen and eternal A winter for the soul carried on oblivion's ghostly breath One last final exhortation To the violent winds that rend and rend and rend and rend I surrender I descend I dissolve I end. 7. The Keening Soils As if through a web of obsidian silk My sight returns as from a dream A dream empty of thoughts and sounds and visions And I remember it being one of the most beautiful places I had ever been I had never before that point known such peace A winter for the spirit, I was harvested of essence A place of endless solace placating this soul's corroded ruins Bereft of flesh, divorced of earth, severed of being And now I can drift once again but soaring free I can look down upon all I once know - all I once was And see with the cold, crystalline clarity of the dead Through eyes unmisted, a mind unfogged, free of the oppressive weight Of the cathedral's dead stone Of this body's withered flesh Of this mind's shattered synapses I didn't think such a quiet was possible That the relentless roil of rage and despair thrumming like lava through me Could be extinguished And given over to a plateau of calm stillness I embrace this season of ending With every fiber of my departing consciousness Frozen and eternal A winter for the soul carried on oblivion's ghostly breath One last final exhortation To the violent winds that rend and rend and rend and rend I surrender I descend I dissolve I end. Lyrics in plain text format