This enthusiastic love of poverty is certainly the keynote of St Francis's spirit; and so one of his disciples in an allegorical poem (translated into English as _The Lady of Poverty_ by Montgomery Carmichael, 1901), and Giotto in one of the frescoes at Assisi, celebrated the "holy nuptials of Francis with Lady Poverty." Another striking feature of Francis's character was his constant joyousness; it was a precept in his rule, and one that he enforced strictly, that his friars should be always rejoicing in the Lord. He retained through life his early love of song, and during his last illness he passed much of his time in singing. His love of nature, animate and inanimate, was very keen and manifested itself in ways that appear somewhat naive. His preaching to the birds is a favourite representation of St Francis in art. All creatures he called his "brothers" or "sisters"--the chief example is the poem of the "Praises of the Creatures," wherein "brother Sun," "sister Moon," "brother Wind," and "sister Water" are called on to praise God. In his last illness he was cauterized, and on seeing the burning iron he addressed "brother Fire," reminding him how he had always loved him and asking him to deal kindly with him. It would be an anachronism to think of Francis as a philanthropist or a "social worker" or a revivalist preacher, though he fulfilled the best functions of all these. Before everything he was an ascetic and a mystic--an ascetic who, though gentle to others, wore out his body by self-denial, so much so that when he came to die he begged pardon of "brother Ass the body" for having unduly ill treated it: a mystic irradiated with the love of God, endowed in an extraordinary degree with the spirit of prayer, and pouring forth his heart by the hour in the tenderest affections to God and our Lord. St Francis was a deacon but not a priest.