D.

H Lawrence - Piano

Getting into the right mood for the

poem
Try and think about a song that you loved
when you were little how did it make you
feel ?
Now think about a song that reminds you of
happy times
Music helps us get in touch with the past

Subject/Theme
Nostalgia for childhoodbut he feels some shame for
that nostalgia (Nostalgia is a strong emotional desire to
connect with the past).
The power of music to evoke memories
The memory of his mother playing music
The way music links the past and present
Religion versus secularism

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is 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.
He sits listening to music being played and drifts
back into a memory of childhood.

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, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our
guide.
Despite his better judgement and feeling that he should
know better he still imagines he is back in his childhood
home listening to the piano.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

With the great black piano appassionato. 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.
It doesnt matter what the singer does now it wont make
the speaker as emotional as the memory of the past,
which makes him cry.

Mood/Tone
Nostalgic/Sentimental Softly Line 1,
Smiles as she sings Line 4
Moves from happy to bittersweet in Stanza
2 - Betrays me
Modulates into sadness as nostalgia
builds in Stanza 3 glamour of childish
days, I weep.

Structure
Poem is built up in rhyming couplets
these create a sense of harmony.
This is built upon with the use of three
equal quatrains.
Perhaps the regular rhyming structure
sounds slightly musical euphony?
Modulates between past and present
look for the time words Now, back etc.

Viewpoint
A single speaker but the point of view
shifts between that of a child and that of
an adult.
Notice the transition between the 1 st and
third person.
Moves forward and backward between
past and present.

Language
Music Contrast between strong and weak
sounds, like the struggle between the two
singers. E.G softly and boom.
Music Musical sounds tinkling, tingling
which sounds like the top range of a
piano.

Metaphors
The piano Produces a flow of music,
which sweeps like river of time.
The Appassionato The religious or
transformative power of art.
The mother A kind of Mary-like figure, a
Madonna.

Freudian matters

One of the main anxieties that people have is

that the passion for his mother dominates the
poem in a rather unhealthy way or is it? Think
about the Oedipus complex