The Planctus (de obitu) Karoli ("Lament [on the Death] of Charlemagne"), also known by its incipit A solis ortu (usque ad occidua) ("From the rising of the sun [to the setting]"), is an anonymous medieval Latin planctus eulogising Charlemagne, written in accented verse by a monk of Bobbio shortly after his subject's death in 814.
Its author has been identified with Columbanus of Saint Trond, who, it is claimed, also wrote the Ad Fidolium, a set of quantitative adonics.
[4] The Planctus appeared in a seventeenth-century manuscript compilation of the poems of Hrabanus Maurus under the subscription "Hymnus Columbani ad Andream episcopum de obitu Caroli", which inspired L. A. Muratori to make the identification, but this late ascription to a Columbanus is probably deduced from the poem's own seventeenth stanza.
[5] The poem is composed of twenty three-line romance strophes each with a distich of two dodecasyllables and the parenthetical heptasyllabic refrain Heu mihi misero!, which does not mark a division in thought but is inserted regularly in an otherwise continuous syntax.
[8] As the Sedulian hymn was sung at Christmastime, the sorrowful Planctus presents a contrast with the joy typically associated with its opening.
The rhythm of the verse, presence of musical notation, and orientation towards contemporary events suggest popular recitation or performance.
[9] The following text is taken from Peter Godman (1985), Latin Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press), 206–211.
A solis ortu usque ad occidua littora maris planctus pulsat pectora.
O Columbane, stringe tuas lacrimas, precesque funde pro illo ad dominum— Heu mihi misero!
O deus cunctae humanae militiae atque caelorum, infernorum domine— Heu mihi misero!
In sancta sede cum tuis apostolis suscipe pium, o tu Christe, Karolum!
The latest critical and only textual and musical edition can be found in Corpus Rhythmorum Musicum (saec.
IV–IX), I, "Songs in non-liturgical sources [Canti di tradizione non liturgica]", 1 "Lyrics [Canzoni]" (Florence: SISMEL, 2007), edited by Francesco Stella (text) and Sam Barrett (music), with reproduction of the manuscript sources and recording of the audio executions of the modern musical transcriptions, now partially consultable here.