Sunday was his day off from work (hard outdoor work that gave him "cracked hands" that hurt), but he didn't take a day off from being the father. He didn't sleep late on his day off. He took care of the family. In the second stanza, we get a picture of the son. He doesn't get up until his father tells him the house is warm. Then he gets up and dresses. This is unlike his father who got dressed in "the blueblack cold."

The son says he fears "the chronic angers of that house." Probably, the parents fought with each other a lot. Perhaps their fights were sometimes physical. The son uses the word house, too, not home. That gives it a colder feeling and shows the parents didn't love each other.

He doesn't see that his father is showing love for him by building the fire and polishing his "good shoes" for church. The son doesn't know any better. He is just a child. He's never taken care of anybody else and never been a parent. "What did I know, what did I know/of loves' austere and lonely offices?" Getting up in the cold wasn't pleasant for his father and he did it alone. He did it for his son because he loved him. To the father, loving his son meant taking care of him. But the son didn't know it. it's a sad poem. I wonder if the son learned to appreciate his father before his father died? or, is the father already gone, and now it's too late?