The Collar By George Herbert Author: Arlene Rodriguez The Collar By George Herbert George Herbert was born on April 3, 1593 at Montgomery Castle, the fifth son of an eminent Welsh family. Herbert’s religious beliefs caused him to be an active opponent of the puritans and the Calvinists.
Herbert became the cannon of Lincoln Cathedral and in 1630 he took holy orders. During the years Herbert spent at Bemerton he worked on a collection of verses known as The Temple. Upon his death they published the manuscript. The poem The Collar is a complaint voiced by person embittered against the constraints that bind him. Impatient with the human condition, the writer resolves to break free.
My lines and life are free, free as the road, / Loose as the wind, as large as store he insists. The accompanying gesture, I struck the board and cried, ‘No more!’ is a dramatic, and boastful act. The tone of these lines is recognized as an exaggeration. The writer is impatient with the need to recognize one’s dependence and to accept one’s need to worship and serve God. The poem as a whole is about blowing off steam.
Herbert develops two quite vivid major images to build the poem’s theme. The images of restraints such as collars / cages / cable / ropesuggests something stiff and restrictive, but not harmful, like a noose or shackles. The title of the poem, The Collar, an article of clothing a man wears when he must be at his best. The word Collar also refers to the white band worn by the clergy, and it is the role of priest the poem alludes to.
This collar symbolizes the priest’s role as servant. The writer chafes at being in suit. The image has at least a double meaning. The word suit refers to the clerical suit and connotatively to the attendance required of a vassal at his lord’s court.
Forsake thy cage, / Thy rope of sands. The word cage suggests a contraption for animals. The purpose is not to harm but merely to restrict movement, and keep from harm. This prevents the creature from getting hurt by its impulses and curiosity about what lies beyond the confines. This imagery of restraints suggests the writer of being in an animalistic state. This animalistic condition is clear when as I raved and grew more fierce and wild/ At every word.
The writer is getting himself worked up. He is unreasoning, like an animal. Even the text, seems to bark: What? Shall I ever sigh and pine?/ My lines and life are free, free as the road, / Loose as the wind, as large as store. The feeling is that the restraints are perhaps appropriate.
Yet, this is not a jail, if the writer can forsake it, then he can get out. His confinement contains an element of choice. However, Ropes of sand is something else. Ropes are not chosen, and sand describes the way they feel on the skin, the discomfort of being chafed by them when one struggles to get them off. Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee/ Good cable, to enforce and draw, / And be thy law, / while thou didst wink and wouldst not see. Then the fuller meaning that Herbert intended for this image is realized.
The whole image of the ropes represents a turn in thought. Service to God, makes us sometimes feel strained. The writer is also enslaved by petty thoughts, the writer’s tirade is an example of such thoughts. Such thoughts are true shackles, and not the disciplinary kind of restraint which collar or even cage is. Another important image pattern in the poem is that of the harvest.
The clergy, are workers in the vineyard. The writer, however, feels his only harvest has been a thorn that has made him bleed. His sighs and tears have made him ruin the fruits of his labors. Herbert means that, when done in the wrong spirit, service is fruitless; self-pity cancels the good.
The writer mourns for bays to crown the year, for flowers [and] garlands gay, emblems of personal rewards, accomplishments, and pleasures. He wishes for greater recognition for his talents. He wonders if he has given up too much, let many of life’s rewards pass him by. The turn in the poem occurs near the end, when the writer leaves off his tirade in the immediate reply to the Master’s call: Methought I heard one calling, Child! / And I replied, My Lord. The distressed note in the writer is silenced and the discontent is passed . The effect is to arouse an identification with the whole situation in the reader, a recognition that we have all been there, whether our lives are modeled to conform with religious ideals, or mere humanist ones.
We sometimes chafe at the restraints imposed by our ideals, but can just as quickly be called back to them. English Essays.
