Question: What image of childhood do you get from the poem Piano?
Introduction
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) is an English writer and poet. He is criticized for his themes like sexuality and the emotional health of his writing. ”Piano” (1918) is a prominent poem by him. This is a nostalgic poem.
Images of childhood in ‘’Piano’’
At the outset of the poem, a woman playing the piano for a man to divert him. But the man goes back to his childhood while listening to the sound of the woman’s piano. The man can visualize that a child sits near the feet of its mother. its mother sings a song with piano and smiles for the baby. The poet says:
”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.”
Later, we can know that the child is nobody but the poet himself. We also see the lovely scene of Sunday winter evening in which the child’s mother sings a hymn in the cosy parlour. The child is at ease in his glamorous childhood days. At last, the man surrenders himself to the memory of his childhood. The poet says:
”To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.”
Conclusion
From the light of the above discussion, we can say that this is a successful nostalgic poem. Sweet days of childhood have been imaged here.
