past.

Setting and tone

The setting is two-fold.  The atmosphere is dusky and soft. The speaker is sitting somewhere with his lover singing to him.  This transports him back to his boyhood home. It is a memory poem that draw the adult back to his mother’s piano.  The tone is intimate and yearning.  

Summary

Everything in the poem inspires the feelings of love and wistfulness for the time in the past that was special to the speaker.  The music that he hears is soft as the woman sings to him. He is whisked back to a scene in his youth: as a boy, he sits under the piano as his mother plays and sings.  His memory brings back the thought of his mother’s tiny feet as he presses them.  She does not scold him but smiles at him as she continues to sing.

The speaker thinks that this song has deceptively pulled him back in time despite himself.  He is a man who should not be responding to this reminiscence because men do not show emotions; however, his heart feels such strong emotion that he weeps.  The Sunday wintry evenings with the family singing hymns in the warm living room and the piano providing the tune tug so strongly at his heart strings that he cannot resist.

Back in the present, the singer continues on with the piano playing passionately, but the singing is like noise in comparison to his recollection of the time with his family. Recalling the childhood family time consumes him, and he takes off the facade of the macho man while he weeps for his past.

…my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Literary devices

Imagery provides the “vista” or visual perception of his memory. The metaphor that is used compares memory to the view seen across a landscape as though the scene is a flood of memories. The traditional image of a wonderful family sitting around a warm, crackling fire singing together and enjoying each other’s company makes any reader long for his childhood home. Through onomatopoeia, the sounds of the piano, the tinkling and tingling support the atmosphere of the cozy time together.

The vocabulary and diction in the poem convey the mixture of feelings that the speaker struggles with between his desire to not lose his masculinity and the tug at his heart to return to his childhood. The rhyme and structure of the poem add to the thought pattern of the speaker: three quatrains with rhymed couplets throughout the poem. The word choice indicates the poet’s strong respect and love for his mother and his family.

Theme

Memory has a hold on the speaker of the poem.  He misses the special moments with his family.  The poem is a conflict between the mature man and the enamored boy sitting under the piano listening to his mother.

The poem expresses the important relationships that people have in their lives.  Mothers and sons have special bonds. The woman who sings to him becomes noise when he thinks of his mother’s love expressed in her song.  The smile of his mother means more to him than the place that he finds himself in as an adult.

Music influences the soul.  The poet is carried back in time by the tune that his lover sings. Rather than making him feel closer to the woman singing, it lures him back to a happier time. 

D. H. Lawrence's "Piano" is a rational, nostalgic poem about the romanticized memories of childhood compared with the realities of adult life. The speaker reluctantly allows himself to be swept into the past. The reason for this reluctance is that the speaker doesn't want to get overly sentimental because this would not be realistic and it would not do justice to the significance of his particular memory. In other words, the speaker is careful to avoid being overly sentimental because the memory itself is, while powerful, about a quaint simplicity of life. 

In the first stanza, the speaker (as an adult) listens to a woman singing. From this experience, he recalls a childhood memory of listening to his mother sing while playing the piano. In the second stanza, he tries to ignore this nostalgic memory and attempts to focus on the present experience as an adult. However, the memory is too powerful. "In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song / Betrays me back," (5-6). This memory is of Sunday evenings singing hymns inside a cozy house in winter. This vision of the warm house protected from the cold winter outside parallels the life of a child when he/she is protected from the realities and responsibilities of the adult world. 

In the third stanza, the speaker notes that the singer (of the present tense in his adult experience) no longer holds his attention. He is completely wrapped up with the memory and longs for his childish days. 

This poem is about the nostalgia and/or myth of the ideal family life. The speaker resists this reverie because he thinks it is impractical. It will only lead to more longing for an idealized past. 

The memory is very specific. This is important because it shows how vivid and selective the memory is. In other words, in idealized moments of memory, we only remember the good things; and, we tend to remember them as being even better than they were. The speaker is fully aware of this, but gets lost in the memory after all. In this case, hope, emotion and nostalgia overpower rational thought to the point that the adult becomes like a child. "The glamour / Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast / Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past." (10-12). 

The rhyme scheme (aabb) is simple, perhaps reflecting the form of some hymns or just the simplicity of the quaint, cozy memory. Enjambment is used (one line running on to the next) to show the connection between the past and the present, notably in lines 2-3 and 5-6. The singer's song and the mother's hymn show the bridge from the present to the past via the timelessness of music. 

A paraphrase of this poem is that the narrator is listening to a woman singing at dusk when he is pulled into thinking about his childhood. The piano is a symbol of his childhood, and he recalls himself sitting under the piano listening to the sounds of the strings and pressing his mother's feet as she sang. Against his will, the song brings him back to his childhood and to cozy Sunday nights when he sang hymns and listened to the piano in his home. Even if the singer he is currently listening to burst into "clamor," the narrator is lost in remembrances of his childhood and cannot be brought to think about the present. He cries for the past. The poem is about the strong pull of childhood memory. The narrator longs for the past, when, perhaps, life was simpler--as simple as the black and white keys on the piano.

The narrator of this poem is listening to a woman singing while she plays the piano, except that he's not really listening to the music happening around him. Instead, he's listening to the music in his memory, which is taking him back to his childhood and the time he enjoyed sitting under the piano while his mother sang and played. In the first stanza, he describes himself as

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In the second stanza, the narrator confesses that the song being sung in the present is transporting him, in sorrowful memory since his mother is no longer living, "back...To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour."

The third and final stanza is the narrator's giving himself over to his mourning for days gone by. The "great black piano appassionato" and melodic singing of the woman in the room with him is unnoticed and unappreciated. The narrator is overcome with memories of his childhood and he can only "weep like a child for the past."

A brief paraphrase of the poem could simply read: I hear the singing and the piano music, but all it does is remind me of the times I spent sitting under the piano while my mother played and sang. How I miss those wonderful nights of warmth and security and loving music at home. The singer's beautiful voice and wonderful piano playing is wasted - I am lost in my memories. How sad that I can never return to that time.

Memories facilitate holding on to the things a person loves.  Even a sophisticated man can find himself in the reminiscences of his former life.  In “Piano” by D. H. Lawrence, the reader engages with the speaker as his mind reveals a childhood memory. 

The narration is first person with the speaker as the narrator. The form for the poem is three quatrains with rhyming couplets throughout the stanzas.  There are two settings: the actual scene of the speaker somewhere listening to music; and the remembrance of a childhood tableau.

1st stanza

The initial picture seems dark and symbiotic. Romance is in the air.  The woman singing to the speaker and the music are one.  It enters the soul of the man.

The scene changes for the narrator as the music takes him back to another time. He begins to see himself as he was as a child.  Listening to his mother play the piano, the boy touches her small feet as she plays.  His mother smiles as she sings.   

2nd stanza

The speaker feels betrayed by the subtle music that brings him  to this nostalgic time. The speaker tries to stay in the present; however, inside his heart,  he feels his emotions welling up so that he can hardly hold back the tears.  In his mind’s eye, he recalls the wintry Sunday evenings in his childhood home:   the warm and welcoming family singing hymns with his mother playing the piano. 

3rd stanza

In the present, the singer’s music has become noise accompanied by passionate piano playing. The speaker is no longer there with the singer in the present.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home….

He responds to the call from his childhood and bridges the gap from adulthood to childhood.  He no longer feels the restraint of manhood as he weeps for the child he once was.  

Techniques

Metaphor

The poet uses the extended metaphor of the piano as the heart of the poem.  The piano represents the present and the past with the speaker caught in the midst of the “insidious” music that infiltrates his heart and mind.  Memory is compared to a vista which extends its meaning to be a flood of memories.

Simile

A simile was chosen by the poet to replicate his crying for himself as a child.

Imagery

The poet’s imagery clearly sets the two scenes so that the reader can place himself in either place: past or present.  Further, the word choice elicits the sounds of both times with the sexual singer evocatively calling the adult singer to the hymns of the mother’s playing.

Alliteration

For his alliterative use to emphasize the harshness and return to the past, the poet uses the “b” sound.

“Betrays me back…” and “…the great black piano.”

Contrast

The use of contrast of scenes portrays the difference in the feelings of the speaker:  the first scene is dusky, yet booming and clamorous; however, the childhood setting is cozy, tingling, hymnal.

Theme

Memory

The poet denotes the power of memory.  The man does not fight the memory but hesitatingly gives into temptation to travel back to his childhood that he loved. Memory wins.  He feels more at home and loved in his childhood than the more glamorous scene in the present.

Memories are an important part of every human being. They need to be care for and occasionally brought out to heal the hurts of the present.