402. stupebit: stupere, to be amazed, gaze at in wonder.
407. iudicetur: as a rel. adv., unde can introduce, as here, a REL. CL. OF PURPOSE.
410. inultum: unavenged.
The Cumaean Sibyl, Sistine Chapel Michelangelo, 1536–41 Vatican Palace, Vatican State
Scala/Art Resource, NY.
DIES IRAE
This best known and most powerful of the medieval hymns is attributed to the Italian Franciscan Thomas of Celano, who lived in the early 13th century and also wrote a biography of his friend St. Thomas of Assisi and a treatise on the miracles of St. Francis. Cast in the form of a prayer of a person hoping to escape eternal damnation on the “Day of Wrath,” the judgment day foretold in the New Testament, the hymn was incorporated as a sequence to the requiem mass and appears in arrangements of the requiem by Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, and others, as well as in such meditations on death as Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead and Liszt’s Dante Symphony. The meter is trochaic, with eight syllables per line, except for the two closing verses, which have seven; and the three verses of each stanza have two-syllable end-line rhyme, except the final stanzas, which have an AABB pattern, and the two irregular closing verses. In combination, the hymn’s rhyme and rhythms have an almost hypnotic effect.
Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
395 Teste David cum Sibylla.
Quantus tremor est futurus,
Quando iudex est venturus,
Cuncta stricte discussurus!
Tuba, mirum spargens sonum
400 Per sepulcra regionum,
Coget omnes ante thronum.
Mors stupebit et natura,
Cum resurget creatura
Iudicanti responsura.
405 Liber scriptus proferetur,
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus iudicetur.
Iudex ergo cum sedebit,
Quidquid latet apparebit:
410 Nil inultum remanebit.
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,
Quem patronum rogaturus,
Cum vix iustus sit securus?
414. tremendae: lit., to be trembled at = terrifying, dreadful.
417. recordare: recordari, to remember.
418. quod sum: IND. STATE.
viae: i.e., his journey to earth.
420. lassus: weary, exhausted.
421. redemisti: redimere, to buy back, ransom, redeem; sc. me.
422. cassus: useless, futile.
423. ultionis: ultio, punishment.
426. ingemisco: ingemiscere, to groan.
reus:defendant, accused.
427. rubet: rubere, to be red, blush.
