THOMAS OF CELANO.
Hymnologists have their favorites among the sacred singers of the Middle
Ages, but all concede the first place to the poet who gave the world the
_Dies Irae_, the great sequence or “prose” sung in the service for the
dead of the Latin Church. It has attracted more attention than any other
single hymn. Whole books have been written about it. It is indissolubly
associated in the history of music with Mozart’s wonderful “Requiem,”
and in that of literature with the concluding scenes of the first part
of “Faust.” More translations have been made of it than of any other
poem in the Latin language, or perhaps in any language. All Christendom
rejoices in it as a common treasure, the gift of God through a devout
Italian monk of the thirteenth century.
It was in an age full of vitality that this “hymn of the giants” was
written—the most interesting century in the history of Christendom,
Matthew Arnold says. In all directions we encounter the play or
collision of great forces. The Papacy, the Empire, the Crusades, the
Mendicant Orders, and even, in its way, the Inquisition, give evidence
of the working of a spirit of energy and movement, which places the
century in sharp contrast to the less explicit development which had
preceded, and the age of comparative exhaustion which followed. Nowhere
was this more visible than in the characters of the great Churchmen of
the thirteenth century. Popes like Innocent III. and Gregory IX.,
founders of orders like Dominic and Francis, theologians like Aquinas
and Bonaventura, may excite our admiration or our censure, but they are
men of such magnitude as are not to be found in other centuries in the
same number. They were live men, and they have made a lasting impression
upon the world by the force of their vitality.
Two of these, Aquinas and Bonaventura, we shall meet again as
hymn-writers. But first we have to deal with one whose chief claim to
recollection is a single great hymn. Thomas of Celano was an Italian at
a time when Italy was stirred by the great battle of Pope with Emperor
into an intellectual life, which was to culminate in Dante at the close
of the century. Exactly in its last year the writing of the _Divina
Commedia_ was to begin. The troubles of his time must have come very
close to Thomas. His native city of Celano, a town of the old Marsians,
was one of the first to suffer under the hand of Frederick II. In 1223
it was forced to capitulate by the Count of Acerra, Thomas of Aquinas,
the warlike uncle and namesake of the great theologian. The inhabitants
were compelled to leave their houses, taking all their movables, and the
place was burned to the ground, only the church of St John being left
standing among the ruins. The people, to punish their disloyalty to the
Emperor, were transported to Sicily, Malta, and Calabria, whence they
returned to rebuild their town after their enemy’s death. How old Thomas
was at the time of this calamity, and whether it had anything to do with
his becoming a monk of the Order of Francis of Assisi, we do not know.
But certainly it is not impossible that the spectacle of this _dies
irae_, when the sanctities of his boyhood’s home were left desolate, or
even the news of its occurrence in his absence, may have left a
permanent impression upon his mind, and may have suggested more or less
directly his great hymn.
Celano lay in the northern end of the Kingdom of Naples, as it was
afterward called, across the Apennines from Rome and slightly north of
it. It was not far from the northern boundary of Frederick’s hereditary
dominions, across which lay the Umbrian region, where Assisi is
situated. At some time and in some way Thomas made his way to Assisi,
and came under the influence of the wonderful man whose personality has
made the mountain town a place of pilgrimage even for those who are not
of the Latin communion.
Francis of Assisi is one of the strangest, if also one of the most
beautiful figures in the history of Christendom. Protestants vie with
Catholics, Karl Hase and Margaret Oliphant with Frederic Ozanam and
Joseph Goerres, in depicting this devout and childlike spirit, who took
poverty for his bride and set himself to realize in the utmost
literalness the command to go forth to preach repentance and forgiveness
of sins, taking neither scrip nor purse, and possessing no more than the
absolute necessaries of human existence. At first he had no thought of
founding an order, but only of helping the poor and the suffering for
Christ’s sweet sake. But the divine fire of loving humility and
childlike simplicity in the man drew others inevitably to his side,
until there arose in his mind the sense of a great vocation to gather
men into a new form of brotherhood. “Fear not,” he said to his earliest
disciples, “in that ye seem few and simple-minded. Preach repentance to
the world, trusting in Him who hath overcome the world, that His Spirit
speaks through you. You will find some to receive you and your word with
joy, if still more to resist and mock you. Bear all that with patience
and meekness. Take no heed for your simplicity or mine. In a short time
the wise and the noble will come to preach with you before princes and
people, and many will be turned to the Lord. He has shown it to me, and
in mine ears there is a sound of the multitude of disciples who are to
come to us out of every people. The French are on the way; the Spaniards
are hurrying; the Germans and English run; and a multitude of other
tongues hasten hither.” So Thomas of Celano records his words in his
biography of the saint, which is the freest from exaggerations and the
most trustworthy of them all.
As Thomas survived Francis some thirty years, there is no reason to
regard him as one of the group of the first disciples who began to
gather around the founder as early as 1209. He is not named among “the
twelve apostles” who came first. But the relation between the two men
seems to have been more than usually close and intimate. Perhaps it was
the more so as being founded on contrasts rather than on resemblances in
their characters. For Francis was distinguished from other teachers of
his age by the bright and cheerful views he entertained of God and His
love to mankind. This was the theme of his sayings and his songs; this
he preached to the poor when they streamed out of the Italian cities to
welcome him as one who brought comfort and joy to the downcast. They
emphasized their sense of the difference between him and the ordinary
preachers by saying, “He hears those whom even God will not hear!”
Thomas, on the other hand, seems to have been constitutionally
predisposed to look at the darker side of things, to sing of judgment
rather than of mercy. But he, too, found comfort in the heart-sunshine
of his master. “His words were like fire,” he says, “penetrating the
heart.” “How lovely, splendid, glorious he appeared in innocence of
life, in simplicity of speech, in purity of heart, in divine delight, in
brotherly love, in constant obedience, in loving harmony, in angelic
aspect.” He found in Francis the most perfect realization of the
Christian ideal that he or his century could conceive of; and shall we
not admit with George Macdonald that a perfect monk is a very fine thing
in his way, although much less so than a perfect man?
Their sympathies as poets must have drawn them together. Francis, as
Joseph Goerres well says, was a troubadour as well as a saint. In his
youth he had won distinction as a singer of worldly songs in the
provençal French, which was then the language of literature in Northern
Italy. After his conversion he burst out singing the praises of God in
this same foreign and exotic tongue. But as he became more directly
interested in the welfare of his fellow-men, he began to use his gift of
song in his native Italian. How many of the poems that are printed under
his name are really his own, and how many are the work of his disciple,
Jacopone da Todi, is matter of dispute. But even Father Affo (1777), the
most negative of critics on this point, does not deny his authorship of
the wonderful “Song of the Sun,” also called the “Song of the
Creatures,” in which the childlike delight of the saint in God’s works
finds such charming expression, that Matthew Arnold has singled it out
as the utterance of what is most exquisite in the spirit of his century.
Thomas, too, it was known, had the poetic gift, and indeed was
recognized by his brethren as the man of most literary power in the
order. Upon him they laid the duty of compiling the founder’s biography,
and of writing the “legend” of his life, which should be read in the
breviary service on the day of his commemoration.
Yet he also was recognized as possessing practical gifts. The order had
spread into Germany as well as in the other directions of which Francis
had prophesied. The first attempts to establish it north of the Alps,
made in 1216, were not happy. The Italians sent on this mission knew
only one German word, “Ja!” “Are you heretics?” (_Sind Sie Ketzer?_) was
the first question put to them on Teutonic soil; and knowing nothing
else to say, they said “Ja!” So they were marched across the frontier
again in disgrace. But brethren better provided in the matter of their
Ollendorff had been sent five years later, and now Thomas of Celano was
one of those who had been selected for the German mission, to give
stability and unity to the work there. He was made “custos” of the
monasteries at Mainz, Worms and Koeln (Cologne), and even took charge of
the whole province when its head returned to Assisi. We find Thomas
himself back in Assisi by 1230, where Jordan, the “custos” of the
Thuringian monasteries, came to see him.
Francis had died in 1226, but whether Thomas was actual witness of his
last days, or derived his knowledge of them from others, his is
recognized as the authentic account of the saint’s departure. His own
death is said to have occurred in 1255, but what events filled up the
meantime, besides the biographic labors we have mentioned, is not known.
Perhaps it was in those years that he composed his great sequence, as
his mind, when less directly brightened by the influence of his master,
would be more likely to revert to those trains of thought which
corresponded to his natural disposition. Possibly it was as his own life
was drawing to a close, and the shadows of the Great Day gathered nearer
him, that he poured out his soul in his great hymn—the greatest of all
hymns, unless we except the _Te Deum_.
Besides the _Dies Irae_, there are ascribed to Thomas two other
sequences—
_Fregit victor virtualis_
and
_Sanctitatis nova signa_,
both in commemoration of Francis. As the founder of the Minor Friars was
canonized two years after his death by Gregory IX., there was a demand
very early for the hymns of this character. And as there was no one
better fitted to write them than the poet who had known Francis so well,
and whom the Pope had directed to prepare a life of the saint, there is
no inherent improbability in the tradition which ascribes them to him.
But they do not take rank beside the _Dies Irae_. They are poems written
to order, not the spontaneous outpouring of the mind of the singer in
the presence of the overwhelming realities of the spiritual universe.
There are no less than nine persons for whom the honor of the authorship
of the _Dies Irae_ has been claimed. Two of these are excluded as having
lived too early to have written a poem of its structure and metrical
character; they are Gregory the Great and Bernard of Clairvaux. Two
others, Augustinus Bugellensis (ob. 1490) and Felix Hammerlein (ob.
1457) are excluded by the fact that the hymn is mentioned in a work
written in 1285. This leaves four rivals to Thomas of Celano in his own
century, viz., John Bonaventura (ob. 1274), his brother Cardinal, Latino
Frangipani, a Dominican (ob. 1294), Humbert, a French Franciscan, who
became the fifth general of his order (ob. 1277), and Matthew of
Acqua-Sparta in Umbria, a Franciscan, who became Bishop of Albano and
cardinal (ob. 1302). But it is to be noticed that for not one of these
is there a witness earlier than the sixteenth century. The first and
last are named as having had the authorship ascribed to them by Luke
Wadding, the historian of the Franciscans in 1625; but he ascribes it to
Thomas of Celano. The other two are named by the Jesuit, Antonio
Possevino (1534-1611) and the Dominican, Leandro Alberti (1479-1552),
the latter, of course, claiming the hymn for the Dominican cardinal, as
to whom there is not the smallest evidence that he ever wrote any poetry
whatever. Besides this, the _Dies Irae_ is a Franciscan, not a Dominican
poem. It deals with the practical and the devotional, not the doctrinal
elements in religion. Had a Dominican written it, he would have been
anxious only for correct doctrinal statement.
Thomas’s claim to its authorship does not rest on the weakness of rival
pretensions. In the year 1285, when Thomas had been dead about thirty
years and Dante was twenty years old, the Franciscan Bartholomew of Pisa
wrote his _Liber Conformitatum_, in which he drew a labored parallel
between the life of Francis of Assisi and that of our Lord. Having
occasion to speak of Celano in this work, he goes on to describe it as
“the place whence came Brother Thomas, who by order of the Pope wrote in
polished speech the first legend of St. Francis, and is said to have
composed the prose which is sung in the Mass for the Dead: _Dies irae,
dies illa_.”[11] This testimony out of Thomas’s own century is confirmed
by parallel evidence. Wadding, whose big folios in clumsy Latin give us
the tradition which prevailed within the order, says: “Brother Thomas of
Celano sang that once celebrated sequence, _Sanctitatis nova signa_,
which now has gone out of use, whose work also is that solemn one for
the dead, _Dies irae, dies illa_, although others wish to ascribe it to
Brother Matthew of Acqua-Sparta, a cardinal taken from among the
Minorites.” Elsewhere Wadding says: “Thomas of Celano, of the province
of Penna, a disciple and companion of St. Francis, published ... a book
about the _Life and Miracles of St. Francis_ ... commonly called by the
brethren the _Old Legend_. Another shorter legend he had published
previously which used to be read in the choir...; three sequences, or
rhythmic proses, of which the first, in praise of St. Francis, begins,
_Fregit victor virtualis_. The second begins, _Sanctitatis nova signa_.
The third concerning the dead, adopted by the Church, _Dies irae, dies
illa_. And this Benedict Gonon, the Coelestine [in 1625] rendered into
French verse and ascribed to St. Bonaventura. Others ascribe it to
Brother Matthew, of Acqua-Sparta, the cardinal; and others yet to other
authors.”[12]
These direct testimonies are confirmed by local tradition in the
province of Abruzzi, in which Celano is situated, and the Franciscan
origin of the hymn by its existence as an inscription on a marble tablet
in the church of St. Francis at Mantua, where it was seen by David
Chytraeus, a German Lutheran, who visited Italy in 1565. That the author
was an Italian is indicated by the peculiar three-line stanza, which
approximates to the _terza-rima_ structure of their poetry, but is not
found in poetry of the Northern nations, except in later imitations.
The statement of Bartholomew of Pisa, that already in 1285 the _Dies
Irae_ was employed in the service for the dead, shows how early it made
its way into church use. In earlier times there was no sequence in that
service, for the reason that the “Hallelujah,” which the sequence always
followed, being a song of rejoicing, was not sung in the funeral
service. This enables us to form an opinion on the controversy as to
whether it was written directly for church use, or adapted for that
after being written as a meditation on the Day of Judgment for private
edification. It would seem most probable that it was the wonderful
beauty and power of the hymn which led the Church to break through its
rule as to the sequence following a Hallelujah necessarily. The _Dies
Irae_ was not written to fill a place, but when written it made a place
for itself.
This controversy connects itself with another as to the genuineness of
certain verses which are prefixed or added to the eighteen of the text
in the Missal. There are, in fact, three texts of the hymn: (1) That of
the Missal, which is generally followed, and will be found at the end of
this chapter. (2) That of the Mantuan marble tablet, which prefixes four
verses:
1. Cogita, anima fidelis,
Ad quid respondere velis
Christo venture de coelis.
2. Cum deposcit rationem
Ob boni omissionem,
Ob mali commissionem.
3. Dies illa, dies irae,
Quam conemur praevenire
Obviamque Deo ire.
4. Seria contritione,
Gratiae apprehensione,
Vitae emendatione.
After these come in the Mantuan text the first sixteen verses of the
Missal text, with slight and unimportant variations, but the seventeenth
and eighteenth are omitted, and the following conclusion substituted:
17. Consors ut beatitatis
Vivam cum justificatis,
In aevum aeternitatis. Amen.
(3) The Hammerlein text, so called because found among the manuscripts
of Felix Hammerlein after his death, which occurred about 1457. This
also contains the first sixteen verses of the Missal text, but with far
more variations than the Mantuan text shows, although not such as
commend themselves by their merits. Then it proceeds, altering and
expanding the seventeenth and eighteenth into three and adding five
more:
17. Oro supplex a ruinis,
Cor contritum quasi cinis;
Gere curam mei finis.
18. Lacrymosa die illa,
Cum resurget ex favilla
Tanquam ignis ex scintilla,
19. Judicandus homo reus,—
Hinc ergo parce Deus,
Esto semper adjutor meus.
20. Quando coeli sunt movendi,
Dies adsunt tunc tremendi,
Nullum tempus poenitendi.
21. Sed salvatis laeta dies;
Et damnatis nulla quies,
Sed daemonum effigies.
22. O tu Deus majestatis,
Alme candor Trinitatis,
Nunc conjunge cum beatis.
23. Vitam meam fac felicem,
Propter tuam genetricem,
Jesse florem et radicem.
24. Praesta nobis tunc levamen,
Dulce nostrum fac certamen,
Ut clamemus omnes: Amen!
That neither of these additions at the beginning and end are parts of
the original sequence, will be evident to any one who feels the
terseness and power of the original. They are feeble, lumbering
excrescences, and are fastened to it in such an external way as to
destroy the unity of the poem, if left as they stand. The text in the
Missal gives us a new conception of the powers of the Latin tongue. Its
wonderful wedding of sense to sound—the _u_ assonance in the second
stanza, the _o_ assonance in the third, and the _a_ and _i_ assonances
in the fourth, for instance—the sense of organ music that runs through
the hymn, even unaccompanied, as distinctly as through the opening
verses of Lowell’s “Vision of Sir Launfal,” and the transitions as
clearly marked in sound as in meaning from lofty adoration to pathetic
entreaty, impart a grandeur and dignity to the _Dies Irae_ which are
unique in this kind of writing. Then the wonderful adaptation of the
triple-rhyme to the theme—like blow following blow of hammer upon anvil,
as Daniel says—impresses every reader. But to all this the supplementary
verses add nothing.
Of the use of the hymn in literature I have spoken already. Sir Walter
Scott introduces a vigorous and characteristic version of a portion into
his “Lay of the Last Minstrel” (1805). Lockhart, writing of the great
Wizard’s death-bed, says of his unconscious and wandering utterances:
“Whatever we could follow him in was some fragment of the Bible, or some
petition of the Litany, or a verse of some psalm in the old Scotch
metrical version, or some of the magnificent hymns of the Romish ritual.
We very often heard distinctly the cadence of the _Dies Irae_.” So the
Earl of Roscommon, in the previous century, died repeating his own
version of the seventeenth stanza:
“Prostrate, my contrite heart I rend;
My God, my Father, and my Friend,
Do not forsake me in my end!”
Dr. Samuel Johnson never could repeat the tenth stanza without being
moved to tears—the stanza Dean Stanley quotes in his description of
Jacob’s Well. Goethe makes Gretchen in “Faust” faint with dismay and
horror as she hears it sung in the cathedral, and from that moment of
salutary pain she becomes another woman. Meinhold in his “Amber-Witch”
(_Die Bernsteinhexe_), represents the very same verses as bringing
comfort and assurance to a more stainless heroine in the hour of her
sorest distress. Carlyle shows us the Romanticist tragedian Werner
quoting the eighth stanza in his strange “last testament,” as his reason
for having written neither a defence nor an accusation of his life:
“With trembling I reflect that I myself shall first learn in its whole
terrific compass what I properly was, when these lines shall be read by
men; that is to say, in a point of time which for me will be no time; in
a condition in which all experience will for me be too late:
‘Rex tremendae majestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis!!!’”
Justus Kerner, in his _Wahnsinnige Brüder_, depicts the overwhelming
power of the hymn upon minds hardened by long continuance in sin, but
suddenly awakened to reflection by its thunders of the Day of Reckoning.
Daniel well compares it to the picture of the Day of Judgment, which was
the means of converting the King of the Bulgars to Christianity.
The translations of our hymn into modern languages, especially into
German and English, have been numbered by the hundred. Partly no doubt
this is due to the entirely Evangelical type of its doctrine, its
freedom from Mariolatry, its exaltation of divine mercy above human
merit, and its picture of the soul’s free access to God without the
intervention of Church and priest. Lisco (1840 and 1843) was able to
specify eighty-seven German versions. Michael (1866) brought this number
up to ninety, of which sixty-two are both complete and exact; and Dr.
Philip Schaff says he can increase the list beyond a hundred without
exhausting the number. Among the German translators are Andreas Gryphius
(1650), A. W. Schlegel (1802), J. G. Fichte (1813), A. L. Follen (1819),
J. F. von Meyer (1824), Claus Harms (1828), J. Emmanuel Veith (1829), C.
J. C. Bunsen (1833), H. A. Daniel (1839), F. G. Lisco (1840), besides
partial versions by J. G. von Herder (1802) and J. H. von Wessenberg
(1820).
The translations into English begin with one by Joshua Sylvester in
1621, that of Richard Crashaw in 1646 coming second. There are four of
that century and two of the next, the most notable being the Earl of
Roscommon’s in 1717. In the first thirty years of the nineteenth century
there are but four, the notable being the partial version by Sir Walter
Scott in 1805, and Macaulay’s in 1826. Since Isaac Williams published
his in 1831, there has been a steady succession of versions, bringing
the number for the United Kingdom in this century up to fifty-one. Of
these the most noteworthy are by John Chandler (1837), Henry Alford
(1844), Richard C. Trench (1844), William J. Irons (1848), Edward
Caswall (1849), Frederick G. Lee (1851), John Mason Neale (1851),
William Bright (1858), Elizabeth R. Charles (1858), Herbert Kynaston
(1862), Richard H. Hutton (1868), Dean Stanley (1868), William C. Dix
(1871), and Hamilton McGill (1876).
In point of numbers at least America surpasses England and approaches
Germany. Since 1841, when two anonymous versions appeared in this
country, there have been at least ninety-six complete versions by
American translators, bringing the total of enumerated versions in the
language up to one hundred and fifty-four. Of American translators may
be named William R. Williams (1843), H. H. Brownell (1847), Abraham
Coles (1847 and later), William G. Dix (1852), S. Dryden Phelps (1855),
John A. Dix (1863 and 1875), Marshall H. Bright (1866), Edward Slosson
(1866), E. C. Benedict (1867), Margaret J. Preston (1868), Philip Schaff
(1868), Samuel W. Duffield (1870 and later), John Anketell (1873),
Charles W. Elliot (1881), Henry C. Lea (1882), M. W. Stryker (1883), H.
L. Hastings (1886), and W. S. McKenzie (1887). This certainly, both by
the length of the list and the weight of many of the names, constitutes
a tribute to the power of the _Dies Irae_ such as never has been offered
to any other hymn! Only Luther’s _Ein’ feste Burg_, of which there are
eighty-one versions in English alone, can compare with it.[13]
Of these English versions, those by Rev. W. J. Irons and Dean Stanley in
England, and those of General John A. Dix and Mr. Edward Slosson in
America, have enjoyed the most popularity. They certainly are excellent,
but every translator seems somewhere to fail of complete success. Nor do
those who have returned again and again to the attempt seem to
accomplish their own ideal of a perfect translation. Dr. Abraham Coles,
who has made some sixteen or seventeen renderings, is no better off than
when he began. Nor do I think my own sixth version has carried me one
inch beyond my first. The truth is that not even the _Pange lingua
gloriosi_, which Dr. Neale calls the most difficult of poems, is in this
respect the equal of this alluring and baffling hymn. But the reader,
who has had no access to the hymn except through the poorest version,
has the means to discern the fact that in it a great mind utters itself
worthily on one of the greatest of themes.
It happened to me once to enter a crowded church, where presently a
distinguished German divine arose to speak. Others had addressed the
audience in English; but he, turning to his fellow-countrymen, began to
pour forth a trumpet-strain of lofty eloquence in his native tongue. He
spoke of the “better valley,” of a happy and peaceful land. He seemed to
see its broad and gentle river and to hear the chiming of its Sabbath
bells. He peopled the air with its lovely citizens and created about us
the presence of its glorious joy. Faintly and brokenly, as now and then
he uttered some familiar words, I could catch glimpses of that _besseres
Thal_, and its brightness and beauty, and the awe of its holy calmness
came upon me—upon me, the stranger and the foreigner, in whose speech no
word was said.
But they who were of the lip and lineage of the land, they whose country
was brought so near and whose hopes were raised on such strong and
familiar wings—they truly were moved to the soul. I saw tears in their
eyes; I heard their suppressed and laboring breath; I beheld their eager
faces; and the glory of that land fell on them even as I gazed. So,
though we cannot here perceive the fulness of the Franciscan’s hymn, yet
do we discern the stately splendor of Messiah’s throne, and
“Catch betimes, with wakeful eyes and clear
Some radiant vista of the realm before us.”
This alone can justify another attempt—the resultant of four previous
versions—to express something of the grandeur of this majestic hymn:
1. Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sybilla.
2. Quantus tremor est futurus,
Quando judex est venturus,
Cuncta stricte discussurus!
3. Tuba mirum sparget sonum
Per sepulcra regionum,
Coget omnes ante thronum.
4. Mors stupebit et natura,
Quum resurget creatura,
Judicanti responsura.
5. Liber scriptus proferetur,
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus judicetur.
6. Judex ergo cum sedebit,
Quidquid latet, apparebit,
Nil inultum remanebit.
7. Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,
Que, patronum rogaturus,
Dum vix justus sit securus?
8. Rex tremendae majestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis!
9. Recordare, Jesu pie,
Quod sum causa tuae viae;
Ne me perdas illâ die!
10. Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti cruce passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus!
11. Juste judex ultionis,
Donum fac remissionis
Ante diem rationis!
12. Ingemisco tanquam reus,
Culpa rubet vultus meus:
Supplicanti parce, Deus!
13. Qui Mariam absolvisti,
Et latronem exaudisti,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti
14. Preces meae non sunt dignae.
Sed tu bonus fac benigne,
Ne perenni cremer igne.
15. Inter oves locum praesta,
Et ab haedis me sequestra,
Statuens in parte dextrâ.
16. Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis,
Voca me cum benedictis.
17. Oro supplex et acclinis,
Cor contritum quasi cinis,
Gere curam mei finis.
18. Lachrymosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus;
Huic ergo parce, Deus!
1. Day of wrath, thy fiery morning
Earth consumes, no longer scorning
David’s and the Sibyl’s warning.
2. Then what terror of each nation
When the Judge shall take his station
Strictly trying his creation!
3. When that trumpet tone amazing,
Through the tombs its message phrasing,
All before the throne is raising.
4. Death and Nature he surprises
Who, a creature, yet arises
Unto those most dread assizes.
5. There a written book remaineth
Whose sure registry containeth
That which all the world arraigneth.
6. Therefore when the Judge is seated
Each deceit shall be defeated,
Vengeance due shall then be meted.
7. With what answer shall I meet him,
By what advocate entreat him,
When the just may scarcely greet him?
8. King of majesty appalling,
Who dost save the elect from falling,
Save me! on thy pity calling.
9. Be thou mindful, Lord most lowly,
That for me thou diedst solely;
Leave me not to perish wholly!
10. Seeking me thy love outwore thee,
And the cross, my ransom, bore thee;
Let not this seem light before thee!
11. Righteous Judge of my condition,
Grant me, for my sins, remission
Ere the day which ends contrition.
12. In my guilt for pity yearning,
With my shame my face is burning—
Spare me, Lord, to thee returning!
13. Mary’s sin thou hast remitted
And the dying thief acquitted;
To my heart this hope is fitted.
14. Poorly are my prayers ascending
But do thou, in mercy bending,
Leave me not to flames unending!
15. Give me with thy sheep a station
Far from goats in separation—
On the right my habitation.
16. When the wicked meet conviction
Doomed to fires of sharp affliction,
Call me forth with benediction.
17. Prone and suppliant I sorrow,
Ashes for my heart I borrow;
Guard me on that awful morrow!
18. O, that day so full of weeping
When, in dust no longer sleeping,
Man must face his worst behavior!
Therefore spare me, God and Saviour!