By englishedition 
This blog post is on the important question answer or short notes on the Collar By George Herbert. I think this will incite your interest in English Literature through this masterpiece of Herbert.
Short Notes on The Collar | Question Answer | George Herbert
1. “I struck the board and cried, no more”– What does the word ‘board’ mean?
Ans. The word ‘board’ has multiple associations. The most important meaning is the paucity of food in monasteries. The monks and the priests have to live frugal lives without delicious food. However, it means a dinner table. It also alludes to the Holy Communion or the Eucharist which remains in a church to commemorate the Last Supper of Jesus Christy. However, it is important to note that the speaker strikes his hand on the dinner table to convey his protest against the restrictions imposed upon man by religious disciplines. The board,’ therefore, symbolizes the narrow periphery of religiosity.
2. What do the ‘lines’ suggest in Herbert’s poem The Collar?
Ans. The word ‘lines’ in Herbert’s The Collar refers to what is in fate. The poet declares that his life and speech will henceforth get formation by the restrain of the priestly vocation. This is so far as the centripetal force is concerned. But in the centrifugal interpretation the word ‘lines’ implies the free and sensual ways of life. The rebel priest here wishes to come out of the church and indulge in carefree irreligious life.
3. What is the meaning of ‘thorn’?
Ans. The word ‘thorn’ means the arduous duties which a priest has to perform and which deprive him of all personal freedom and the sensual enjoyments of life. The ‘thorn’ here also takes us back to the crucifixion when Christ was pierced with a spear and when blood flowed from the his wounds. In other words, we have an allusion to the passion of Christ.
4. What is the meaning of the expression ‘cordial fruit’?
Ans. The expression ‘cordial fruit’ meaning a fruit with Sweet taste immediately evokes the biblical image of the forbidden fruit. In Herbert’s poem The Collar it has two different meanings. So far as the theme of the poem presents as a priest rebelling against ecclesiastical authority, ‘cordial fruit’ implies religious temptation. Having been tantalized by the fruit of salvation which supposed to be found through religious discipline the speaker poet wants to enter into the church and became a priest. As the poem
is studied as the confession of a sinner and his earnest endeavour to enter into the church, the expression suggests temptation of physical enjoyment that had once drawn him out from within the church and made him a sinner.
5. What is meant by ‘sigh-blown age’?
Ans. The expression ‘sigh blown age’ from Herbert’s devotional metaphysical poem, The Collar chalks out the picture of a tempest tossed natural landscape. If the rebel priest has to remain cloistered within The Church where he finds nothing with his active consciousness of what happens in the external physical world, his inner psyche would be tossed by continuous heaving deep sighs and suppressed cries. Again if we take the second meaning of the poem a sinner’s urge to lead the priestly life into account, the meaning of ‘sigh-blown agé remains valid. In this case the sinner will have to spend the remaining years of his life standing outside and heaving deep sighs of frustration that would make his inner psyche tempest tossed, if he is not allowed to enter into the church.
6. What is called ‘cage”?
Ans. In Herbert’s poem The Collar the priestly vocation with its vigorous restrain is compared to an imprisonment, a veritable cage. In one line of meaning of the poem the rebel priest violently crushades against the cage that religiosity represents. The other line of meaning suggests that the repentant sinneris desirous to enter into the cage of religious disciplines.
7. What is the meaning of the rope of sands or cable’?
Ans. The priestly vocation is often assumed to be the rope or cable which pulls the ordinary man to a place near God. But in Herbert’s The Collar, the speaker feels that he has erroneously considered unreliable rope a straight first cable.
8. What does the word ‘corn’ stand for?
Ans. The word ‘corn’ stands for early achievement and pleasure in the poem The Collar. Therefore, it means the emblems of sensual enjoyments. On the contrary, ‘corn’ also refers to the bread taken by the Christians as the flesh of Christ during the Holy Communion. Thus, the word is ambiguous.
9. What does ‘death’s head’ ferer to in The Collar?
Ans. The expression ‘death’s head’ which means the skill of a dead man refers to the religious ritual of counting the beads. As a memento mori, the act reminds the devotee of the horrors of the life after death. The rebel priest in Herbert’s devotional metaphysical poem The Collar, violently reacts against
the dry religions rituals, like ‘death head.’ The rebel priest is unwilling to spend his life within the church through this dry ritual of death’s head. Reversely, the confessing sinner wishes to observe for the purification of life.
10. What are the two meanings of the word ‘collar’?
Ans. The word ‘collar’ has different meanings. Firstly it means the neck band attached to a coat or a shirt. Secondly, the word means an instrument of slavery since the slaves during the Roman period +had to put on iron collars around their neck. Allied to this meaning is the third sense of the collar being that of a dog held in tight leash by the owner. Fourthly the word ‘collar’ also conveys the idea of the collar worn by a priest as a symbol of his priesthood. The fifth meaning originates from a pun on the word ‘choler’ since the over- restraint of priesthood causes a feeling of bitterness and resentment. However the word here means anything that keeps a man under restraint and corbs his freedom.
THE COLLAR- SUMMARY
THE COLLAR- PARAPHRASE