D H Lawrence was considered an important writer when I was younger, but his reputation has declined somewhat since then. There are signs that interest in his work may be reviving, helped by the recent publication of a new biography, Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence by Frances Wilson.
Like Thomas Hardy, D H Lawrence was best-known as a novelist but was arguably at his best in his poetry. It was Lawrence’s novels and essays that went out of fashion, whereas the poems have continued to be included in anthologies. Many of his poems are written in a very loose, free verse style, but this earlier one from 1913 is tighter and more structured.
The poem gives a very accurate depiction of how memory works. The woman singing at the piano in the present day summons the memory of the poet’s mother. It’s not a conscious act but something that happens involuntarily. What Lawrence calls “the flood of remembrance” is the kind of memory that Proust was so interested in. Lawrence was also certainly aware of Freud’s theories quite early on, although he later argued against them.
We can all recognise that painful feeling of realising the impossibility of going back into the past. There’s a wistful longing for the security of childhood here. The poem gets it across very effectively and poignantly.
Ultimately though, Piano is a very enjoyable poem. With its long lines and strong end rhymes the poem itself has a musical quality.
Piano by D H Lawrence
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.
The Good Reader 