Introduction to the canticle
The canticle's context in The Sound and the Fury

O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise, glory, honor, and all blessing! 

Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures, and specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who brings us the light; fair is he and shines with a very great spendor: O Lord, he signifies to us thee! 

Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven. 

Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and cloud, calms and all weather by the which thou upholdest life in all creatures. 

Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble and precious and clean. 

Praised by my Lord for our brother fire, through whom thou givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant and very mighty and strong. 

Praised by my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruits and flowers of many colors, and grass. 

Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for his love's sake, and who endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are they who peaceably shall endure, for thou, O most Highest, shalt give them a crown. 

Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the body, from which no man escapeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin! Blessed are they who are found walking by thy most holy will, for the second death shall have no power to do them harm. *

Praise ye and bless the Lord, and give thanks unto him and serve him with great humility. (Sabatier, Paul. Life of St. Francis of Assisi. New York: Charles Scriber's Sons: 1916.) 
 

NOTES 

1. [Introduction] "Blind, weak, and in great pain, Saint Francis passed seven weeks in the summer of 1225 at San Damiano, where Saint Clare had lovingly prepared for him a little hut of rush matting in the garden, in the hope that rest and quiet would assist his recovery. Despite great suffering he never lost his serenity and joy, and receiving one night an assurance of future blessedness, he composed this canticle of praise in his native Italian, and taught the brethren to sing it to the people when they preached. Not long afterwards the Bishop and Mayor of Assisi had a serious dispute, and the Saint composed the stanza 'Praise to Thee, my Lord, for those who pardon one another,' and sent some friars to sing it before them to effect a reconciliation. Two years later, at the approach of death, he called on Brother Leo and Brother Angelo to sing the Canticle to him, and added the stanza, 'Praised be my Lord for our Sister Death.' 
      It should perhaps be mentioned that the Italian per can mean both for and by, which makes it uncertain whether Francis is praising God for His creatures, or asking that God may be praised by His creatures, as in the Benedicite. The general sense, especially those of the last stanzas, seems to favour the first meaning." (Sherley-Price, Leo. St. Francis of Assisi. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959.) 

2. Context in The Sound and the Fury: The "Sister Death" stanza (shown above in red), which Assisi wrote for the "Canticle" while on his deathbed, provides several symbols and themes that are bastions of Quentin's fatalism in Faulkner's novel. Quentin makes the image of his sister Caddy into that of Death: he associates her with his own suicide, especially in his account of his blundering, naive, and sexually-charged attempt at killing her and then turning the knife on himself. Ironically, if Caddy is "the death of the body," it is not her body that will die, for she remains a symbol of fertility in the otherwise sterile Compson family. It is her sexuality, and Quentin's envy of it, that prompts him to invent the lie of their incest, which is the great but imaginary sin that Quentin's death will atone for, in his own quest for matyrdom. He finds sympathy for his pain in the canticle, which cries: "Woe to him that dieth in mortal sin!" And, paradoxically, he believes his suffering will be erased by truthfulness to his father about his invented incest. Thus, the "second death," the Judgment of Revelation 20:13, cannot harm him and neither can his suicide. He is both damned to woe but raised to blessedness. Furthermore, he recalls (or imagines) his father's comment - "You will not even be dead . . . . You cannot bear to think that someday it will no longer hurt you like this" - a comment that criticizes Quentin's conflicting aspirations for both martyrdom and the perpetuation of his pain, by which he defines himself - and that turns his weak-willed suicidal tendencies into a nihilism that enables him to drop into the river. [Context contributed by Joel Deshaye, 1999.]

*. Laudato si, mi signore, per sora nostra morte corporale, de la quale nullu homo vivente po skappare: guai a quilli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali; beati quilli ke se trovarà ne le tue sanctissime voluntati, ka la morte secunda no farrà male.