The original poem appropriately closes with the words: "Gere curam mei finis." The last six lines break the unity and symmetry of the poem, they differ from the rest in rhyme and measure, and turn the attention from the writer to the departed faithful as the subject of his prayer (huic, eis). They are, therefore, an addition by another hand, probably from a funeral service already in public use. CHARACTER AND VALUE. The DIES IRE is the acknowledged masterpiece of Latin church poetry, and the greatest judgment hymn of all ages. No single poem of any nation or language has acquired such a celebrity, and been the subject of so much praise and comment. It has no rival. It stands solitary and alone in its glory, and will probably never be surpassed. 1 "It would be difficult," says Coles, "to find, in the whole range of literature, a production to which a profounder interest attaches than to that magnificent canticle of the middle ages, the DIES IRE. Among poetic gems it is the diamond." The Germans call it, with reference to its majesty and antique massiveness, the gigantic hymn (Gigantenhymnus). In simplicity and faith it fully equals an older anonymous judgment hymn of the seventh or eighth century, commencing: "Apparebit repentina magna dies Domini," while in lyric fervor and effect, as well as in majesty and terror, it far surpasses it and all the numerous imitations of later times. The STABAT MATER DOLOROSA bears many points of resemblance, being likewise the product of the Franciscan order, a regular part of the Catholic worship, the theme of glorious musical compositions, and multiplied by a large number of translations. It is equal, or even superior, to the DIES IRE in pathos, but does not reach its power and grandeur, and offends Protestant ears by addressing the Virgin Mary rather than Christ. The DIES IRÆ breathes, it is true, the medieval spirit of legal 1See the Latin text in Daniel, Thes. Hymnol. 1. 194, and the English version of John M. Neale in Schaff's Christ in Song, p. 287 sqq. (London edition). istic and ascetic piety, and looks forward to the solemn windingup of the world's history with feelings of trembling and fear rather than of hope.1 The concluding prayer for the dead, which, however, is a later addition, implies that the souls of the departed (in Purgatory) may be benefited by the prayers of the living. But with this exception the poem is free from the objectionable features of Romanism; while it is positively evangelical in representing salvation as an act of the free grace of Christ, "qui salvandos salvat gratis." And in the lines, "Quem patronum rogaturus, Quum vix justus sit securus," it virtually renounces the doctrine of the advocacy of the Virgin and the Saints, and takes refuge only in Christ. Beneath the drifting mass of mediæval traditions there was an undercurrent of simple faith in Christ, which meets us in the writings of St. Anselm, St. Bernard, the sermons of Tauler, and in the inimitable Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. When Christians come to die, they ask nothing but mercy and rely solely on the merits of the Redeemer. The nearer they approach Christ and eternity the nearer they approach each other. Copernicus composed the following epitaph for himself: "Not the grace bestowed upon Paul do I pray for; That alone which Thou grantedst the crucified robber,— The DIES IRÆ is as much admired by Protestants as by Roman Catholics. Protestant writers have done most for its illustration and translation, and Goethe has best described its effect upon the guilty conscience (in the cathedral scene of Faust): "Horror seizes thee! The trump sounds! And thy heart From the repose of its ashes, For fiery torment Brought to life again, 1 The bright aspect of the judgment as the day of complete redemption is set forth in the medieval companion hymn, "Dies iræ, dies vitæ." See Schaff's Christ in Song, p. 296. The secret of the power of the DIES IRE lies first in the intensity of pious feeling with which its great theme is handled. The poet realizes the impending judgment of the world as an awful and overpowering event that is as certain as the approach of night. He hears the trumpet of the archangel sounding through the open sepulchres. He sees the dead rising from the dust of ages, and stands aghast before the final conflagration and collapse of the universe. He sees the Son of Man seated in terrific majesty on the judgment throne, with the open book of the deeds of ages, dividing the good from the bad and pronouncing the irrevocable sentence of everlasting weal and everlasting woe. And with the spirit of an humble penitent he pleads for mercy, mercy at the hands of Him who left his throne of glory and died on the cross for the salvation of sinners. The poem is a cry from the depth of personal experience, and irresistibly draws every reader into sympathetic excitement. That man is indeed to be pitied who can read it without shaking and quivering with emotion. The second element of its power lies in the inimitable form which commands the admiration of every man of taste for poetry or music. The poem is divided into stanzas; each stanza is a triplet with a triple double rhyme, which strikes the ear like solemn music and excites deep emotion. Dante may have caught from it the inspiration of the spirit and form of his Divina Commedia with its triplets and terza rima. Each word is the right word in the right place, and could not be spared. And what a combination of simplicity and majesty in the diction as well as the thought! Whatever there is of power, dignity and melody in the old Roman tongue is here combined with unadorned simplicity, as in no other poem, heathen or Christian, and is made subservient to the one grand idea of the poem. The DIES IRE is onomato-poetic. It echoes, as well as human language can do, the collapse and wreck of the universe, the trembling and wailing of sinners before the judgment seat of an infinitely holy and righteous God, and the humble pleading for mercy from the All-Merciful. Every word sounds like the peal of an organ, yea, like the trumpet of the archangel summoning the dead to endless bliss or to endless woe. The stately metre, the triple rhyme, the selection of the vowels in full harmony with the thought and feeling, heighten and complete the effect upon the ear and the heart of the hearer. The music of the vowel assonances and consonances, e. g., the double u in the 2d and 7th stanzas (futurus, venturus, discussurus; dicturus, rogaturus, securus), the o and u in the 3d stanza (sonum, regionum, thronum), the i and e in the 9th stanza (pie, viae, die), defy the skill of the best translators in any language.1 OPINIONS OF CRITICS. We add the judgments of eminent writers. Frederick von Meyer, a senator of Frankfort-on-the-Main, and author of a revision of Luther's German Bible, in introducing two original translations of the DIES IRE, calls it "an awful poem, poor in imagery, all feeling. Like a hammer it beats the human breast with three mysterious rhyme-strokes. With the unfeeling person who can read it without terror, or hear it without awe, I would not live under one roof. I wish it could be sounded into the ears of the impenitent and hypocrites every Ash Wednesday, or Good Friday, or any other day of humiliation and prayer in all the churches."2 Daniel, the learned hymnologist, justly styles the DIES IRE “uno omnium consensu sacrae poeseos summum decus et ecclesiæ 1 In another place (Christ in Song, London ed., 1870, p. 290) I have thus characterized this poem: "The secret of the irresistible power of the DIES IRE lies in the awful grandeur of the theme, the intense earnestness and pathos of the poet, the simple majesty and solemn music of its language, the stately metre, the triple rhyme, and the vowel assonances chosen in striking adaptation to the sense,-all combining to produce an overwhelming effect, as if we heard the final crash of the universe, the commotion of the opening graves, the trumpet of the archangel that summons the quick and the dead, and as if we saw 'the King of tremendous majesty,' seated on the throne of justice and mercy, and ready to dispense eternal life and eternal woe." 2 "Der Lichtbote" (Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1806): "Wie ein Hammer schlägt es mit drei geheimnissvollen Reimklängen an die Menschenbrust. Mit dem Unempfindlichen, der es ohne Schrecken lesen und ohne Grauen hören kann, möchte ich nicht unter einem Dache wohnen." Daniel, ii. 112, erroneously ascribes this admirable description to Guericke (1849), who must have borrowed it from Meyer (1806). latina nepov pretiosissimum," and adds: "Quot sunt verba tot pondera, immo tonitrua.”1 Albert Knapp, one of the most gifted religious poets of Germany, compares the Latin original to a blast from the trump of the resurrection, and declares it inimitable in any translation." Dean Milman places it next to the Te Deum, and remarks: "There is nothing, in my judgment, to be compared with the monkish Dies ira, dies illa, or even the Stabat Mater." Dr. William R. Williams, an American Baptist divine, and a scholar of cultivated literary taste, has appended to his essay on the "Conservative Principle of our Literature," a fine note on DIES IRE, in which he characterizes it thus: "Combining somewhat of the rhythm of classical Latin with the rhymes of the medieval Latin, treating of a theme full of awful sublimity, and grouping together the most startling imagery of Scripture as to the last judgment, and throwing this into yet stronger relief by the barbaric (?) simplicity of the style in which it is set, and adding to all these its full and trumpet-like cadences, and uniting with the impassioned feelings of the South, whence it emanated, the gravity of the North, whose severer style it adopted, it is well fitted to arouse the hearer." 3 3 Archbishop Trench, who among other useful works has prepared an admirable collection of Latin Church poetry, and written one of the best translations of DIES IRE, remarks: "The metre so grandly devised, of which I remember no other example,* fitted though it has here shown itself for bringing out some of 1 Thes. Hymnol., ii., p. 112. 2 Evangelischer Liederschatz, 3d ed., p. 1347. 3 Miscellanies, N. Y., 1850, p. 78. This is an error. There are verses of striking resemblance attributed by some to St. Bernard, but probably of much later date (see Mohnike, l. c., p. 9): 66 Quum recordor moriturus Quid post mortem sim futurus, Quem expecto non securus. Terret dies me terroris, Dies iræ ac furoris, Dies ultrix peccatoris, Dies iræ, dies illa." |