1, the speaker says “No one ever thanked him.” The connotation of this can be gained from the beginning of the last stanza: “Speaking indifferently…” This implies that the speaker is that “no one,” the person who never thanked his father—until now, with this poem.

Many of the words in this poem have very negative connotations: "blueblack cold," "cracked hands," and "ached," from the first stanza, for example, seem to convey the pain that the narrator's father endured. Also, "splintering, breaking," "fearing," and "chronic angers" from the second stanza are all quite negative. The narrator's father essentially tries to protect his family from these harsh and negative experiences of the cold; this is why he gets up early, even on Sundays, to make up the fires so that his family can wait until it's warm to get out of their warm beds. The words that have positive connotations, like "banked fires blaze" or "warm," are the effects of the father's work, the way he seems to show his love. It does not seem as though the narrator's father is very affectionate or loving in a warm and obvious way; instead, he shows his love by making his family more comfortable, by enduring the cold so that they do not have to.

The narrator says, "I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking." Cold describes the temperature, and cold itself cannot splinter or break, so we know that this line must be figurative. What does splinter? Wood splinters, especially when it is burning in a fire like those fires the father has made. Therefore, the cold that is breaking up, as a result of the fires the narrator's father made, is being compared to the wood that is breaking up in the fires themselves.

The poem contains quite a bit of both metaphor and connotation. Consider the way the writer is using associations to describe the combination of cold and warmth in his home growing up. The repeated contrast between the cold of the situation and the warmth of his father's nurturing and care creates an exaggerated sense of a two-fold existence. It suggests a troubled love between the father and the son, because the son can't understand the father's sacrifice. The metaphors help to build this idea: the "blueblack cold," the "cold splintering and breaking," the father "driving out the cold," the "angers of th[e] house," and "love's austere and lonely offices" all contribute the sense that the kid doesn't quite get it. All the difficulties are projected into the house and the weather. He doesn't get his father's sacrifice, because he doesn't see it beyond his own comfort.

Tactile images are combined with visual or auditory images in order to represent the extreme temperatures and mimic the "coldness" with which the speaker, when he was a child, treated his father. The cold isn't just cold; it's "blueblack cold." This combination of information that appeals to two senses in one image is called synesthesia. Consider the color skin becomes when it is frostbitten (or even bruised): black and blue. These are colors associated with injury and pain. Later in the poem, the "cold [is] splintering, breaking," an image that combines the tactile cold with the auditory image of something splintering or cracking. This is painful-sounding as well. Both of these images that capitalize on synesthesia double up on the sensory experience. They emphasize how painful it must have been for the father to get up so very early, even on his one day off from the work that makes his "cracked hands" ache. This helps us to understand that he would only do such a thing out of love for his family; this is something his son did not understand when he was younger but seems to understand now.

Neither metaphors nor similes contribute to the poem's meaning. There is an example of metonymy when the speaker describes his fear of the "chronic angers of that house." The house itself is not angry, but it sounds like the people who live in it may be. The house is substituted for the people who live inside the house. If I were a father who had trouble expressing my love in conventional ways and no one ever seemed to appreciate the sacrifices I made for my loved ones, I'd imagine I'd get angry too. He does not sound like the affectionate or warm-and-fuzzy type, but it does not follow that he does not love his family because his only way of expressing his love is through "austere and lonely" practices.

The basic meaning of this poem by Robert Hayden is that parental love is often demonstrated in ways that children do not appreciate at the time. The poem describes how the speaker's father would wake early every Sunday in "the blueblack cold," a vivid image which underlines the harshness of the conditions being faced for love. The speaker's father has been working all week: his "labor" has led him to enter the weekend with "cracked hands" which "ached." Again, these are quite visceral images; we can sense the pain in the father's hands as he forces himself to go about his business on these freezing mornings. It is worth it, though, because he is making "banked fires blaze" so that his children do not have to experience the same cold. The father is literally driving out the cold from his house; metaphorically, the heat of the fire is a manifestation of the warmth of his love, protecting his children from the coldness of the world outside.

The controlling metaphor of Robert Hayden's "Whose Winter Sundays" is in the father's "austere and lonely offices," acts of love performed against the elements so that the family would not encounter the cold.  Like the fire that the father builds, the imagery moves from cold to warm:  The father rises in the "blueblack cold,/then with cracked hands that ached from labor...." he builds a fire to warm the house.  Still in bed, the poet as a boy wakes and hears "the cold splintering, breaking."  The cold is bitter, and can be heard as well as felt.  The sensory images become auditory with the words splintering and breaking.  When the boy rises, he can still sense the "chronic angers" of the house.  This metaphor compares the harsh auditory images to complaints.  That is, it is as though the house complains as the father seeks to get it to warm up.

In the third stanza, however, the images become warmer as the poet reflectively expresses his appreciation of the father who

had driven out the cold/And polished my good shoes as well.

These images are warmer; the shining of the shoes expresses a positive feeling, and the father emerges as respected and admired through Hayden's use of these warm images in the closing couplet:

What did I know, what did I know/of love's austere and lonely offices?

The speaker, now a man, realizes that it was wrong that "No one ever thanked him."  Just as there has been a gap between the father and the son in the boy's youth as expressed in the first two stanzas, so, too, is there a gap between the perspective of the speaker as a youth and, finally, as an adult.