The speaker from “The Collar” displays two sides of himself. One wants to rebel against God, while the other believes that true joy lies in submission to God’s will. By the end of the poem, we see that the second side has prevailed, and the speaker has reentered God’s fold.
The Question and Answer section for The Collar is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.
“Gather ye rose buds while ye may,…then be not coy, but use your time.”The poet's implication is that lovers must enjoy themselves in the prime of their youth in the world where time is ever fleeting.
The speaker’s two sides and voices suggest another theme to the poem. There is an internal struggle between the heart and the will. The heart is inflamed by passion, as we can see in the first voice’s melodramatic complaints about a barren life....
The "collar" refers to a sense of confinement and constraint, similar to the collars worn by chained prisoners or dogs. However, Dale B. J. Randall suggests that the “collar” has multifaceted meanings, relating to homonyms include “caller” and “...
