Themes: Childhood, Parent/Child, Parental Love, Nostalgia & memories
Type: Rhyming Couplets
Background
- Written by D. H. Lawrence (wrote over 800 poems)
- His childhood was dominated by poverty and the friction between his parents these became strong influences on his writing
- In Piano he describes a woman singing to him at dusk and is transported back to his childhood in memory of sitting under a piano
- He wants to resist the memory but it is powerful and fills him with longing and nostalgia for this happy time of his childhood
- Celebrates the importance of music and memory
Language
- Reference to “softly” and “dusk” in the first line sets the mood of a wistful longing
- Sense of security and coziness felt when his mother played the piano
- Written in the present tense to make it vivid
- Third-person to create a distance between the man he is and the child he was – it also conveys the internal struggle the poet is experiencing
- He seems to fight the remembrance as if it was a weakness
- Onomatopoeia – “tinkling piano”
- Written in rhyming couplets and has a nursery rhyme simplicity – fitting to childhood theme
- Regular meter and uniformity – keeping with the sense of security of childhood
- The tone of the poem is nostalgic – a wistful longing for times past
Parent/child
- He sits under his mother’s piano and describes how she pressed the pedals suggests that they were close both mentally and physically
- He clearly admires and loves his mother
- His memories show mixed emotions
