Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/443

 THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 43!

carried on his business and rendered great service in the Wesleyan choir. His tombstone is in St. Michael s Churchyard, Dumfries.

Hymn 844. Day of wrath ! O day of mourning 1 THOMAS OF CELANO ; translated by DR. IRONS.

The oldest form of the Latin text is given in a MS. in the Bodleian, a Dominican missal written at the end of the fourteenth century. The author was probably Thomas of Celano, a Franciscan friar of the thirteenth century, who was the friend and biographer of St. Francis. He was born at Celano, in the kingdom of Naples, across the Apennines a little to the north of Rome, early in the thirteenth century, and died about 1254. Celano was not far from Assisi, where he became the disciple and friend of St. Francis.

The hymn is found in the Mass for the Dead from about 1480, and became part of the religious life of the Middle Ages. Daniel says, Even those to whom the hymns of the Latin Church are almost entirely unknown, certainly know this one : and if any one can be found so alien from human nature that they have no appreciation of sacred poetry, yet as a matter of certainty, even they would give their minds to this hymn, of which every word is mighty, yea, even a thunderclap.

Archbishop Trench writes, Nor is it hard to account for its popularity. The metre si grandly devised, of which I remember no other example, fitted though it has here shown itself for bringing out some of the noblest powers of the Latin language the solemn effect of the triple rhyme, which has been likened to blow following blow of the hammer on the anvil the confi dence of the poet in the universal interest of his theme, a con fidence which has made him set out his matter with so majestic and unadorned plainness as at once to be intelligible to all, these merits, with many more, have given the Dies Irae a foremost place among the masterpieces of sacred song.

The first line is from the Vulgate version of Zeph. i. 1 5. Goethe makes the choir sing it in the Minster scene of Faust where the evil spirit gets behind Grctchen and interprets the words till the girl exclaims

The song mine heart Did melt to water !

At last she falls into a swoon.

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