Piano by D. H. Lawrence

“Piano” by D. H. Lawrence

The poem Piano, by D. H. Lawrence describes his memories of childhood. Hearing a woman singing takes him to the time when his mother played piano on Sunday evenings. In the present, this woman is singing and playing the piano with great passion. However, the passionate music is not affecting him, because he can only think about his childhood rather than the beauty of the music that exists in his actual space.

“A woman is singing” softly to the speaker “in the dusk.” The speaker is describing the place he is at in the present moment. It’s partially dark, and a woman is singing to him. As he listens to the woman’s soft voice, he remembers the time when he was little. He says that it is taking him “back down the vista of years,” till he sees “a child sitting under the piano.” This child is the speaker.

The child is “sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings,” and he is “pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.” When the speaker was a child, he used to be under the piano where the strings were tingling since his mother was playing the piano. He used to press his mother’s feet, which were in balance. His mother was singing with a smile on her face.

The speaker sees this scenery in his mind. As a reader, I can even imagine him standing in a dark room looking at a woman singing and imagining his old days with his mother. Using the picturesque words such as “softly,” “dusk...