Thou mighty formidable King! Thou mercy's unexhausted spring! Some comfortable pity bring. Forget not what my ransom cost, Nor let my dear-bought soul be lost, In storms of guilty terror tost. Thou, who for me didst feel such pain, Whose precious blood the cross did stain, Let not those agonies be vain. Thou whom avenging powers obey, Cancel my debt (too great to pay) Before the said accounting day. Surrounded with amazing fears, Whose load my soul with anguish hears, I sigh, I weep, accept my tears. Thou, who wast mov'd with Mary's grief, And by absolving of the thief, Hast given me hope, now give relief. Reject not my unworthy prayer, Preserve me from the dangerous snare, Which death and gaping hell prepare. Give my exalted soul a place Among the chosen right hand race, The sons of God, and heirs of grace. From that insatiate abyss, Where flames devour and serpents hiss, Promote me to Thy seat of bliss. Prostrate, my contrite heart I rend, My God, my Father, and my Friend: Do not forsake me in my end. Well may they curse their second birth, Who rise to a surviving death. Thou great Creator of mankind, Let guilty man compassion find.--_Amen_. AUTHORSHIP OF THE DIES IRÆ. O'BRIEN. [1] [Footnote 1: Rev. John O'Brien, A.M., Prof. of Sacred Liturgy in Mount St. Mary's College, Emmettsburg, Md.] The authorship of the "Dies Iræ" seems the most difficult to settle. This much, however, is certain: that he who has the strongest claims to it is Latino Orsini, generally styled _Frangipani_, whom his maternal uncle, Pope Nicholas III. (Gætano Orsini), raised to the cardinalate in 1278. He was more generally known by the name of Cardinal Malabranca, and was, at first, a member of the Order of St. Dominic. (See _Dublin Review_, Vol. XX., 1846; Gavantus, Thesaur. Sacr. Rit., p. 490.) As this sacred hymn is conceded to be one of the grandest that has ever been written, it is but natural to expect that the number of authors claiming it would be very large. Some even have attributed it to Pope Gregory the Great, who lived as far back as the year 604. St. Bernard, too, is mentioned in connection with it, and so are several others; but as it is hardly necessary to mention all, we shall only say that, after Cardinal Orsini, the claims to it on the part of Thomas de Celano, of the Order of Franciscans Minor, are the greatest. There is very little reason for attributing it to Father Humbert, the fifth general of the Dominicans in 1273; and hardly any at all for accrediting it to Augustinus de Biella, of the Order of Augustinian Eremites. A very widely circulated opinion is that the "Dies Iræ," as it now stands, is but an improved form of a Sequence which was long in use before the age of any of those authors whom we have cited. Gavantus gives us, at page 490 of his "Thesaurus of Sacred Rites," a few stanzas of this ancient sequence. [1]