…is defined as ready to accept something without protest; submit or comply silently.

We get this picture of an old man, Eben, on a night where he is isolated and alone with nothing but a bottle in his hand, Mr. Flood. He looks below his town where friends once revered him, then drinks. And he sees a mother’s love for a child, then drinks. Eben drinks in order to fill that loss by desensitizing himself. He can only look from the outside as he accepts the reality of his situation. We can interpret this poem of how a man who loss himself to alcoholism along with friends and his dreams of love and a family.