Those Winter Sundays by:Robert Hayden

The tone of this poem was a central to the feeling it is meant to imply. The storyline seemed simple enough; a man looks back on memories of his father and regrets not realizing how much his father loved him. The author uses details in his diction to describe the father's hard work. Some of this diction includes; he got up early, cracked hands, labor, and ache. Other diction states that the boy was scared of the anger in the house, suggesting that his father may have been the source of this anger. In the end the author seems to realize how much his father must of loved him and how ungrateful he had been as a child. The diction in this poem and the tone it creates allows the reader to understand the way the man felt both as a child and looking back. The reader can also see the strain and hard work this father put forth for his family.