The Dies Irae opens where the prophets end, on the day of wrath that dissolves the world in ashes, as David and the Sibyl testify, pagan and biblical prophecy summoned as joint witnesses in the first stanza. The trumpet scatters its astonishing sound through the tombs of every land, death and nature stand amazed as creation rises to answer its judge, and the written book is brought forth in which everything is contained. Then the poem does something the great liturgical texts rarely do, it collapses into the first person.
What shall I, wretch, say then, whom shall I ask to plead for me, when scarcely the righteous are safe. The singer reminds Jesus that he is the cause of his journey, that he sat weary seeking him, and begs a place among the sheep rather than the goats, ending on the day of tears when guilty man rises from the embers to be judged. The verse form is part of the terror, trochaic lines in rhymed tercets falling like blows.
Tradition names the Franciscan Thomas of Celano as author, but the testimony is late, and scholars have shown the text reworking older judgement verses, so the ascription stands as pious tradition rather than fact. What is certain is the poem's century, the thirteenth, and its milieu, the Franciscan meditation on the last things.