Dissolved into tears all at once It wasn't sadness. Reading this poem once would lead you to believe that it is just about a boy's anguish at the loss of his father. Rereading the poem, however, reveals that the poem is truly about the boy's purity being snatched from him in his need for attention. Although the father is gone, the family still needs the boy so they send someone to collect him. Thus, the father has not been lost, only stolen from home. This is how I interpret this line: "Splintered at once in tears, the boy fled his father's house." Here, "splinter" means "to divide as wood does when cut; part"; and "tears" refers to deep cuts made by knives or swords. In other words, the son had parts of himself torn away when he saw what had happened to his father. The father had fallen victim to a cruel crime that was common back then. Someone had broken into the house and stabbed him to death. The boy must have known something bad had happened to his father because of the tears in his eyes when he left the house. Even though the father was gone, I think it is safe to say that the family needed the boy even more now.