Norman Rockwell's illustration depicts opposite attitudes - Mom marches the kids off to church, they're all dressed in their best clothes, with good posture, bibles in hand. Easy-going Dad, meanwhile, still in his PJs, surrounded by the disembodied Sunday newspapers, is happy to stay home and slob around. The Aries/Libra axis or Virgo/Pisces, perhaps?
In Robert Hayden's poem I feel a Cancer/Capricorn axis. The author is feeling nostalgic, melancholy and a little regretful. His father, to me, represents clear Capricorn qualities - hard work and reliability in spite of difficulties.
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
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,
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? (by Robert Hayden)
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