In "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden, and in "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" by James Wright, both speakers have a feeling of regret. Both of the authors have the same approaches to making this feeling apparent. In each of these poems, the feeling of regret and disappointment in themselves is portrayed through the use of imagery.
             In the poem "Those Winter Sundays", the use of imagery is very apparent throughout the poem. In the opening line, "Sundays too my father got up early/ and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold" (lines 1-2). In these lines Hayden first explains the setting, and then explains his fathers duty, or ritual. "Then with cracked hands that ached/ from labor in the weekday weather made/ banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him" (lines 3-5). By using the word cracked, Hayden demonstrates how the speakers father worked hard, and by using "weekday weather" it gives the audiences a feeling that the weather of the week was not very comfortable. When Hayden says "No one ever thanked him", this starts to give the reader the impression that this speaker is regretful, maybe because he never thanked his father. In the next stanza, Hayden uses a lot of imagery to give the audience an idea of how those winter Sundays were, "I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking" (line 6). When Hayden is saying the cold is "splintering, breaking" he is talking about how the father is warming the room up, these words also give life to the cold. Hayden, using personification, makes the cold seem alive, which makes this father seem like more of a hero because he is driving out a living thing. The very last stanza lets us know the speakers feeling of regret.
             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 offi...