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.

Most of us have hundreds, even thousands of songs in our heads and are surprised when songs we haven’t heard in years suddenly turn up again, provoking long-forgotten
memories.  

Lawrence’s poem “Piano” explores what he calls the insidious mastery of song . When a song floods our minds, more often than not it’s because we connect it to a specific time, place, event, or loved one that was important to us in our past.

The chronological beginning of Lawrence’s poem, however, is not his opening stanza’s recollection of his mother playing the piano decades before, but the present event that caused the memory to occur, which he is careful not to reveal until his third and final stanza:

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato.

Lawrence is at a classical music concert where he is deeply affected by a song—not because of the singer’s and pianist’s powerful performances, but because the song is one he remembers his mother played in their family parlour when he was a small child.

The concert pianist is doubtless a virtuoso, his piano a Steinway grand.

The concert singer is probably a famous Pavarotti-like tenor; but for our speaker both perform in vain ,because their music carries him down the vista of years ,where in the dusk, a woman is singing to him. No matter how grand, their version has become mere clamour , irrelevant background noise, as he remembers the softer, amateur version of the song that their virtuoso version invokes.

We probably would not be impressed by Mrs. Lawrence’s upright piano and modest singing voice. But our poet is no longer simply listening. Both aurally and visually he has been lifted out of the concert hall and wafted back

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

It is Sunday. It is winter, and his mother is singing a hymn. He is sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings ; touching her small, poised feet as she smiles and sings.

Notice that our adult speaker initially resists the flood of remembrance that soon overtakes him. There is a chasm between the author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Women in Love and the childish boy he once was. He has moved on emotionally and intellectually, is no longer impressed by tinkling pianos . He is aware that leaving the concert hall to return to the amateur music of his childhood betray (s) the sophisticated adult he has become.

Still, inspite of his adult self, he gives in. He is aware that the concert singer and pianist have reached the song’s crescendo. But their superior musicianship is no match for the glamour / of childish days , now upon him. His manhood is cast / Down in the flood of remembrance, and he weeps like a child for the past .

*****

“Piano” was first published in the London magazine English Review in 1918. By the time I.A. Richard’s published Practical Criticism, eleven years later, it was already a much-admired D .H. Lawrence poem, although many readers dismissed it as “sentimental.”

Richard’s book was devoted to an experiment in which he asked Cambridge University honor students to evaluate poems he chose partly because he thought they’d be unlikely to identify the author.One of those poems was Piano, and, as Richards notes, their misreadings were disastrous.

Most of the students didn’t realize that there were two contrasting pianos and singers in the poem. They thought the only pianist and singer was the child’s mother.

Without perceiving the double settings and the tension between adult and child, they dismissed the poem as “sentimental.” I’ll just quote one student to demonstrate how off the mark Richards found their assessments of Lawrence’s poetic ability to be:

If this, on further inspection, should not prove to be silly,
maudlin, sentimental twaddle, I have missed the point.
Such it certainly seems to me, and I loathe it.It is reveling
in emotion for its own sake, that is nothing short of nauseating.
Moreover, it is badly done. I object to “cosy,” and
“tinkling” used of a piano that elsewhere “booms” or is
“appassionato” which is simply absurd. If this be poetry,
give me prose.

*****

In exploring the divide between adult and child Lawrence may have been thinking of William James, who argued in his Principles of Psychology (1890) that the self is not a single entity but a plural system.

James identified material, social, and spiritual selves and famously wrote that a person has “as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize them,” suggesting that we are, in effect, multiple persons across different contexts.

An adult sitting in an elegant concert hall in formal attire, surrounded by equally educated social and intellectual peers is not the same person as a little boy sitting under a piano listening to his mother sing a hymn. Both are sitting and listening to music; but the boy seems more comfortable, more physically connected to and thrilled by his music than the adult he will become. The adult’s piano is far away, up on a stage. The boy can feel the tingling of the piano strings and touch his pianist’s feet. But he is now just a memory; and that is the great irony of Lawrence’s Piano.

*****

Too early for theories of modular, narrative, or dialogical selves, Lawrence may have thought of himself as responding to William

Wordsworth’s famous poem “My Heart Leaps Up.”

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So be it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Wordsworth believes that our same intuitive response to a rainbow at all ages assures us that child, man, elderly are all connected, rolled into one.

It’s almost as if Lawrence is challenging Wordsworth’s sense of a consistent, unified self. The tension between child and man in Piano, the speaker’s fear of connecting with the child within him suggest that they are separate identities that dwell uneasily in the same house.

Lawrence’s emphasis on contrasting motion suggests that he was indeed responding to Wordsworth. That poet’s heart leaps up with joy at evidence of his unified identity. Lawrence’s heart weeps at being cast down into a former self that only remains as a memory.

If Wordsworth’s joy is unmitigated so is Lawrence’s sense of loss. He is in mourning not only for the loss of his childhood, mother, and family, but the impossibility of fully recovering the reality of the past.