“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden is told by a person looking back on his childhood. He realizes and understands the significance his father had when he was younger. The poem shows the speaker moving from the child having fear and not thanking his father, to the adult becoming aware of the love and respect he has for his dad. He realizes all the labor his father did was out of care. Some were simple tasks, and others not so much. Realizing why his father did what he did, the child gained a great amount of maturity. The lack of understanding about who the speaker really is made the poem stand out to me. He starts off randomly stating his father got up early on Sunday’s too. This family’s strict love and lonely times can be interpreted as feelings and tasks that the narrator’s father fulfilled for his son, the speaker. 

The poem is a non-rhythmic sonnet, consisting of 14 lines. The meter of “Those Winter Sundays” varies throughout the whole 3 stanzas. These stanzas tell a story through its non-rhythmic explanatory pattern. There is alliteration, assonance, consonance, and repetition in Hayden’s work. In the first line, “Sunday’s too my father got up early” is important because the “too” implies that the speaker’s father did not only get up early on Sundays, but every day he got up to provide for his family. His dad sacrificed a lot of sleep in my opinion because he was waking up before sunrise. Hayden uses consonance to give that edge in the second line, “and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold”, with the use of the word “blueblack”. Using colors, he refers to how cold and dark the morning air was for the speaker’s father to have to get up in. With the rest of the first stanza we can tell that his father went through a good deal of labor. The author uses assonance with “ached” and “blaze” as well as alliteration with “banked”, “blaze”, and “weekday weather”, Hayden shows us that the speaker’s dad warmed up the house so his family didn’t have to get up in the cold. He states, “then with cracked hands that ached/from labor in the weekday weather made/banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.” Robert Hayden uses consonance again with the words “cold”, “cracked”, and “ached” to show the severe times his father went through. With the last line in that stanza above, the speaker now realizes that no one ever thanked his dad. It seems like he understands that he should have taken advantage of that when he could have. He still goes on talking about all his father has done, signifying he would have liked to say thank you to his dad when he had the chance. It now seems he can’t see his father anymore, possibly why the narrator is thinking back on his dad’s responsibilities. 

The second stanza starts off with the speaker talking about how he used to wake and hear the blueblack cold throughout the house break due to the warmth of the fires swallowing it. The narrator states, “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. /When the rooms were warm, he’d call, /and slowly I would rise and dress, /fearing the chronic angers of that house,”. Once the cold shifted to warmth his father would get him up so he could take his time to get dressed and not have to rush. This is the exact opposite of what the father goes through on the daily. However, the speaker had fear while getting ready because his dad was unhappy. The word use of “chronic” points out that the anger had been there awhile. The anger may be caused due to the speaker’s mother leaving his father, or because his father is upset with the job he must work so often. I assume this because the speaker only focuses on his father throughout all three stanzas. 

In the final stanza, we understand that the speaker spoke indifferently or poorly to his father. The speaker shows us how he has strong regret for treating his father like he did. Hayden wrote, “Speaking indifferently to him, /who had driven out the cold/and polished my good shoes as well. /What did I know, what did I know/of love’s austere and lonely offices?” It’s possible he’s like this because of the kind of emotional relationship they have with each other. The last few lines show that the speaker knows he shouldn’t have spoken poorly to someone who did so much for him. His father killed the cold and shined his shoes, meaning he showed love in different ways, not all emotional. With Hayden’s use of repetition in line 13, he emphasizes the fact that the speaker didn’t know better when he was younger, and had matured in his understanding of love since. He shows us, as readers how deeply sad he felt for disrespecting his father. The last 2 lines are made up of the speaker’s regret. At one time, the child had not understood the love, service, and sacrifice his father evoked. 

Throughout some days we may look back into the past on something we regret. We notice that if we knew back then what we now know, the situation and our feelings could have turned out differently. This memory of love’s harsh and lonesome services can be interpreted as emotions and responsibilities that the speaker’s dad conveyed and fulfilled for his child. This simplicity filled with sorrow and guilt in “Those Winter Sundays” written by Robert Hayden makes it clear that love is about accountability. This poem shows its readers to not have the same cold connection with a parent, and to not have regret later but instead fulfill satisfaction while in the moment.
