Piano by D H Lawrence
Analysis: Piano. (D.H.Lawrence)
D. H. Lawrence’s Piano shows a man experiencing nostalgia as he listens to a woman singing which reminds him of his childhood.
The poem starts with the man hearing the soft singing of a woman which takes him on a mental journey down memory lane and he sees visions of his childhood flashing in front of him. The memory he focuses on is that of a small child who is sitting beneath a grand piano as his mother plays it, taking his mother’s elegant feet into his small hands and listening to the loud chords of music.
The man is reluctant to remember those days and be affected by them, but the song which the woman is singing seems to have a slow subtle impact on him and despite his hesitance he gives in to his emotions and yearns for the days of childhood: the cold Sunday evenings in winter when it used to now outside and they, mother and son used to sit in the warm comfortable indoors and sing melodious hymns with the help of the piano.
The man who was listening to the lady singing now thinks that it would be useless for her to continue on as he is already so affected by his memories that he is just physically present, his mind elsewhere. Without any thought of his adulthood, he bursts into tears remembering the blissful ignorance and innocence of his infant years. He starts weeping, thus bridging the gap between his past and his present.
Lawrence uses words in such an intricate manner throughout the poem that they end up creating vivid and delightful imagery. By using the word ‘vista’ he propels the images of the reader’s own childhood in front of his eyes so that one experiences the same thing that man experienced. These images ‘take him back down’ into the memories of his childhood. This immediately brings to mind the image that growing up is similar to climbing some difficult mountain and in his adulthood, the man is right at the top, and from there he falls into his childhood again. Onomatopoeia used in describing the ‘boom’ of
D. H. Lawrence’s Piano shows a man experiencing nostalgia as he listens to a woman singing which reminds him of his childhood.
The poem starts with the man hearing the soft singing of a woman which takes him on a mental journey down memory lane and he sees visions of his childhood flashing in front of him. The memory he focuses on is that of a small child who is sitting beneath a grand piano as his mother plays it, taking his mother’s elegant feet into his small hands and listening to the loud chords of music.
The man is reluctant to remember those days and be affected by them, but the song which the woman is singing seems to have a slow subtle impact on him and despite his hesitance he gives in to his emotions and yearns for the days of childhood: the cold Sunday evenings in winter when it used to now outside and they, mother and son used to sit in the warm comfortable indoors and sing melodious hymns with the help of the piano.
The man who was listening to the lady singing now thinks that it would be useless for her to continue on as he is already so affected by his memories that he is just physically present, his mind elsewhere. Without any thought of his adulthood, he bursts into tears remembering the blissful ignorance and innocence of his infant years. He starts weeping, thus bridging the gap between his past and his present.
Lawrence uses words in such an intricate manner throughout the poem that they end up creating vivid and delightful imagery. By using the word ‘vista’ he propels the images of the reader’s own childhood in front of his eyes so that one experiences the same thing that man experienced. These images ‘take him back down’ into the memories of his childhood. This immediately brings to mind the image that growing up is similar to climbing some difficult mountain and in his adulthood, the man is right at the top, and from there he falls into his childhood again. Onomatopoeia used in describing the ‘boom’ of