" "Tell me then, Father," said
Brother Leo, "what would be perfect joy?" "If we now knocked at the
convent gates, cold and wet and faint with hunger, and the porter sent
us away with harsh words, so that we should have to stand in the snow
until the evening; if we thus waited, bearing all things patiently
without murmuring--that would be perfect joy: the mercy of
self-control."
"He met death singing," says his biographer, Thomas of Celano, the
author of the magnificent _Dies irae, dies illa_. On his deathbed St.
Francis composed and sang without interruption the Hymn to the Sun, that
lofty song of praise in which the sum total of his noble life, love for
all created things,--is comprised and transfigured. It expresses a new
form of devotion, composed of the ecstasy of love and perfect humility.
He embraced in his heart his brother Sun, his sister Moon, the dear
Stars; his brother Wind, his sister and mother Earth; and on the day of
his death this _brother seraphicus_ added to it a powerful and touching
song of praise of his "brother Death.
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