Piano by D.H. Lawrence

Piano by D.H. Lawrence immediately made me think of a memory that he might have had when he was a child. The long lines make the reader feel like they are drifting in to nostalgia or some type of sweet dream that someone may have.

            Softly in the dusk, a woman singing to me;

            Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

            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.

The first line of the poem, it gives the feeling that D.H. is going back into time and recalls some kind of memory of his mother singing. He gives the image of his mother being a happy woman that “smiles as she sings” and how he would be under the piano, listening and enjoying her company. D.H. ends the poem with the line: “Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past” (Line 12). I think this poem is done in memory of his mother and the time that he would spend with her; He longs for the feeling of the unconditional love of his mother and wishes that she were back in his life. (His mother died 8 years before this poem was written)