seventeenth century.

The subject is the soul's 'desire to depart and to be with Christ.' The
second to the fifth stanzas take their form from the legend of the
phoenix, a fabulous bird which was said to build its funeral pyre, to
burn itself, singing a death-song, and to rise from its ashes in renewed
youth. The soul, passing from this life to immortality, conceives itself
as a phoenix consuming in the flames and singing a death-song (the
third, fourth, and fifth stanzas).

3. aegram: Canticles 2. 5. 4. Dilecto: Christ in heaven. Cf. Canticles
2. 3. 27-30. The flame leaping toward the sky is a type of the soul in
its eagerness to ascend to heaven. Cf.:

Rivers to the ocean run
Nor stay in all their course:
Fire ascending seeks the sun:
Both speed them to their source.
So the soul that's born of God
Pants to view his glorious face,
Upward tends to his abode
To rest in his embrace.
--Seagrave.

THOMAS A CELANO.

DIES IRAE.

Thomas, called _a Celano_ from a small town in central Italy, was a
Franciscan monk who lived in the thirteenth century and was custos of
certain convents of his order on the Rhine. His authorship of this hymn
is probable, not certain.

For the literature see Julian, p. 294.

In the ritual the _Dies Irae_ is used for All Souls' Day and for requiem
masses. The most famous musical setting is by Mozart.

Daniel says of this hymn, 'Each word is a peal of thunder.' Trench says,
'The triple rhyme has been likened to blow following blow of the hammer
on the anvil.'

Goethe introduces the _Dies Irae_ into a scene of the first part of
Faust; the remorse of Gretchen becomes overwhelming as she hears the
hymn pealing through the cathedral, the culmination corning with the
repetition of the words Quid sum miser tunc, dicturus?

Sir Walter Scott thus quotes and summarizes at the end of _The Lay of
the Last Minstrel_:

Far the echoing aisles prolong
The awful burthen of the song,--
DIES IRAE, DIES ILLA,
SOLVET SAECLUM IN FAVILLA;...
Thus the holy fathers sung.

HYMN FOR THE DEAD.

That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away,
What power shall be the sinner's stay?
How shall he meet that dreadful day?

When, shrivelling like a parched scroll,
The naming heavens together roll;
When louder yet, and yet more dread,
Swells the high trump that wakes the dead.

Oh! on that day, that wrathful day,
When