This past week in my class Cultural Heritage of the West we have been looking at several poems. The following poem is one that we read and I just fell in love with it. It is called The Collar by George Herbert.

I struck the board and cried, “No more;
I will abroad.
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.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruite?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before me tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasure; leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands
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.
Away! Take heed,
I will abroad.
Call in thy death’s head there: tie up thy fears.
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need
Deserves his load.”
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling “Child!”
And I replied, “My Lord!”

Okay I know it seems like a very random poem and doesn’t look to follow much of a poetic structure. That’s the beauty of it though. Although Herbert does have ryming words placed randomly throughout the entire piece it isn’t until the last four lines that he actually has an organized structure to these rhyming words. This represents the feeling of meaningless and madness the speaker feels at the beginning and then at the end just like the rhyming words fit to make sense so does the speakers world. He realizes that he doesn’t work for the pure reason that he is a servant but because he is a child of the Lord. Because of this truth his world and what he does in it has so much more meaning. Isn’t this just a beautiful poem!