Geoffrey Hill (b. 1932) A Treatise of Civil Power, 2007.
A Treatise of Civil Power is Hill’s most recent volume of poems. It shows its author continuing, in this self-consciously ‘late’ phase of his writing, to engage with Milton’s poetic and political legacy. It draws its title from Milton’s 1659 essay addressed to parliament on the necessary freedoms of religious conscience. Hill’s collection circles tentatively around a definition of the phrase, ‘Civil Power’, leaving its field of resonance deliberately broad.