George Herbert The Collar Analysis

The Poem

“The Collar” is George Herbert’s most extensive and detailed poem of rebellion. Thirty-two of its thirty-six lines describe what the poem itself calls the ravings of a person growing “more fierce and wild” as he strains to release himself from the restrictive pressures that surround him. Much like John Donne’s energetic complaints to God in several of his Holy Sonnets, “The Collar” gives full expression to the speaker’s resentment of the pain and rigor of leading a life that is moral and holy. Only after these complaints are freely, almost hysterically voiced is the speaker taught how quickly they can be banished by a patient God who ultimately gives more than he asks.

The poem begins with a dramatic statement of refusal—“I struck the board, and cried, No more”—and the following lines give examples of

Beneath the superficial disorder, or developing progressively through it, is an orderly pattern that climaxes in the last four lines of the poem. This is best seen in the rhyme scheme. As Joseph H. Summers points out in George Herbert: His Religion and Art (1954), every line in “The Collar” finds a rhyme somewhere, but through most of the poem there are many off-rhymes, and because rhymes do not occur at predictable, regular intervals, they sometimes undermine rather than create a sense of closure. Near the end, the rhyming lines begin to occur closer and closer, but the speaker’s last assertion that he is tying up his fears is still belied by the irregular off-rhymes (abroad/load, fears/forbears). Only in the last four lines do the rhymes become regular (alternating abab) and purposeful: The designation of the speaker as “wild” is replaced by the new name given to him, “Child,” and his every “word” of rebelliousness gives way to “Lord,” the divine word capable of redeeming human anger, weakness, and