Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature,
Principally Belletristic .
Pope, the Bible, the classics, and what his age called the Pindaric ode. He
knew and applied Baxter's treatise on meditation, The Saints' Everlasting
Rest (London, 1650), which argues for unceasing self-examination, as
much of a Presbyterian as a Puritan heritage. The few poems which may
not be classed as meditations (including elegies) are the generally descriptive
and patriotic series growing out of the French and Indian War,
though even these, in their use of fear and awe and death, show the qualities
of the sublime of a more secular nature and application.
Davies' ninety-odd known poems, including those in his Miscellaneous
Poems (Williamsburg, 1752) have recently been collected in one volume.
The elegiac pieces, more reflective than most southern poems in this genre,
are discussed above. The odes on peace and science are still contemplative,
though not at all in the melancholy tone of most others. But the sublimityfear
produced by great storms is reflected in the two or three he wrote
at sea.
As in his sermons, so in his verse Davies is neither happy Calvinist nor
gloomy depicter of final doom, neither an Edward Taylor nor a Michael
Wigglesworth. He veers between the two extremes, relatively simple in
his diction, especially in his hymns. In his diary he observes how music
and harmony affected him emotionally and even intellectually. His later
"Odes" were set to music by a Princeton graduate (see Chapter VIII), and
for his earlier hymns he always carefully indicated a familiar tune.
In his preface to the Miscellaneous Poems the poet conventionally and
modestly speaks of his "fortuitous" compositions. He slightly misquotes
"that antiquated Wit, Herbert," in observing that "A Verse may hit him
whom a Sermon flies, / And turn Delight into a Sacrifice." He admits he
occasionally imitates Milton and Pindar, and suggestions of Pope's Messiah,
Young's Night Thoughts, and Thomson's The Seasons appear in certain
images and meters. He frequently uses the couplet, usually preferring the
octosyllabic to the decasyllabic. His imagery, as suggested, bears close resemblance
to the Solomonic passages of the English Old Testament. As
one critic has remarked, there is remarkably little fire and brimstone in any
of his verses, even when his theme is the future life.
"The Invisible World" is somewhat suggestive of George Herbert.
Thomson and other pre-Romantic poets may be echoed in the storm poems,
but Nature's thunderous majesty clearly fascinated Davies personally.
Whether of wind or rain of a Virginia summer day or mountainous waves
of the winter Atlantic, storms were the Creator's grandest symbols of
sublimity.
And now above and all around
Majestic Thunders roll with murm'ring Sound,
Convulse the Air, and rock the Ground.