Here’s a full breakdown of the ideas in ‘Piano’ by DH Lawrence, tailored towards GCSE / IGCSE students but also useful for those studying at a higher level. Enjoy!
Includes:
THE POEM
VOCABULARY
SUMMARY
SPEAKER/VOICE
STRUCTURE/FORM
LANGUAGE
CONTEXT
THEMES
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.
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.
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.
VOCABULARY
Appassionato > ‘passionately’, a piano
Poignant > beautiful, sad, touching
Insidious > harmful in a slow or hidden way
Hymn > a religious song
Melancholy > a light, almost enjoyable sadness
Remembrance > the state of remembering something
STORY/SUMMARY
Stanza 1: A woman is singing to the speaker, he is watching her and a piano onstage -
the setting is ‘dusk’, a dark space between day and night. The music and singing take
him back in memory to a point where he sees a child sitting under the piano, pressing
the feet of his mother who is singing and smiling. We assume he is the child and that
this is a childhood memory.
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