Francis had died in 1226, but whether Thomas was actual witness of his last days, or derived his knowledge of them from others, his is recognized as the authentic account of the saint’s departure. His own death is said to have occurred in 1255, but what events filled up the meantime, besides the biographic labors we have mentioned, is not known. Perhaps it was in those years that he composed his great sequence, as his mind, when less directly brightened by the influence of his master, would be more likely to revert to those trains of thought which corresponded to his natural disposition. Possibly it was as his own life was drawing to a close, and the shadows of the Great Day gathered nearer him, that he poured out his soul in his great hymn—the greatest of all hymns, unless we except the _Te Deum_. Besides the _Dies Irae_, there are ascribed to Thomas two other sequences— _Fregit victor virtualis_ and _Sanctitatis nova signa_, both in commemoration of Francis. As the founder of the Minor Friars was canonized two years after his death by Gregory IX., there was a demand very early for the hymns of this character. And as there was no one better fitted to write them than the poet who had known Francis so well, and whom the Pope had directed to prepare a life of the saint, there is no inherent improbability in the tradition which ascribes them to him. But they do not take rank beside the _Dies Irae_. They are poems written to order, not the spontaneous outpouring of the mind of the singer in the presence of the overwhelming realities of the spiritual universe.