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PARTISA REVIEW
where the speaker confronts the "Crucified Lord," who himself"crucifies" his
petitioner, a petitioner who thus falls between "harsh grace and hurtful
scorn." Here are the last six lines:
What grips me then, or what does my soul grasp?
If I grasp nothing what is there to break?
You are beyond me, innermost true light,
uttermost exile for no exile's sake,
king of our earth not caring to unclasp
its void embrace, the semblance of your quiet.
Most of us, in turning to Donald Davie's
To Scorch or Freeze,
will be–
lieve that we have found something radically different from almost every–
thing in Hill. Davie's poems are brief, short-lined, pithy, in a very loose, free
verse. Rhymes occur only occasionally and sometimes seem joltingly spo–
radic. Yet Davie's verse, for all its modernity, is in a way also very old–
fashioned. That is to say it is deeply, but almost cheerfully, Christian, and a
great deal of it quotes or parodies or plays off of biblical passages, including
the poetry of the Psalms. Thus, "Sing Unto the Lord a New Song" echoes
Psalm 33:
Cheerfulness in lordly
leisure; and
holiness in thunder and high wind.
The poet rejoices in the storm, wants it to continue:
Imagine Him yawning, hear Him
crack His joints as He stretches,
magisterial!
Praise the Lord upon the harp,
sing to him on the damnable steel-guitar!
Davie's "So make them melt as the dishoused snail" derives from and
quotes from Psalm 58. His "Curtains!" recalls a number of Scriptural pas–
sages including one from the Book ofAmos. Some quotations are as familiar
as "So teach us to number our days ...." (Psalm 90: 12), and the poem
entitled "And Our Eternal Home" takes its title from a familiar hymn. "The
Creature David" quotes from Psalm 104; "Saw I never the quite righteous
Forsaken," from Psalm 37. When the Scriptural source is less evident, the
measure and tone of Davie's passages often maintain the Scriptural note, as
in "You that would bite the whole pie and / mell with the pack, yet pout
yourself ill-used" or "They shall shine and run to and fro / like sparks among
