Poetry can share emotions and tell tales. In the poem, "Those Winter Sundays-, authored by Robert Hayden, the imagery of winter, of regret, of time gone by, provides the feeling of a child for their father. The poem's main point is that love can be expressed in doing deeds instead of being expressed emotionally.
The speaker a man or a woman "now grown " remembers childhood, wintry cold, Sundays. For the purpose of the essay the male pronoun will be used. It happened in the past in the (speaker's) childhood home. Regret and new understanding motivates the person to tell the tale.
The speaker, using vivid imagery, looks back on his/her childhood. He remembers how his father was a hard worker " a laborer who used his hands "who got up early even on his day off. The father made sure the house was heated up before everyone in house awoke. Once the "rooms were warm he'd call."" The boy would get up and put on his clothes "slowly-, "fearing the chronic angers of that house-. The speaker was "indifferent- to his father: the man that had "driven out the cold- and shined up the "good shoes-. The person realizes they did not "know of love's austere and lonely offices."".
A child does not understand what adult responsibilities are. Only when one reaches maturity and has the experience can they truly understand the sacrifices that a parent makes for their child. The narrator expresses pain in his childhood inability to understand his father's love through the repetition, in line 13, of "what did I know."" The speaker regrets not telling his father that he was grateful for the love his father showed in his deeds. This is seen in line 5, "No one ever thanked him,"" and in line 10, "Speaking indifferently to him."" The father got up early even on "Sundays- to make sure his family was comfortable. He was not too demonstrative of his love. The child feared the "chronic angers of that house.
