GCSE-readyPiano by D H Lawrence: context, form and key methods
A woman's singing carries a grown man back to his childhood, sitting under the piano while his mother played. This poem is out of copyright, so you can quote it freely.
Context and themes
Themes: memory and nostalgia; childhood; a son's love for his mother; the power of music; the gap between the adult and the child he was.
Form and structure
The structure moves through time: stanza 1 begins in the present and slips into the first memory; stanza 2 is the memory of Sunday evenings at home; stanza 3 returns to the present, where the adult gives in completely and weeps.
Language and key methods
Personification of music: "the insidious mastery of song / Betrays me back". The song is sly and powerful, pulling him back against his will ("In spite of myself").
Contrast: the present singer's "great black piano appassionato" is loud and grand, yet weaker than the gentle "tinkling piano" of the past.
Water imagery and simile: "my manhood is cast / Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past." His adult self-control is swept away.
Compare with: Half-past Two and Poem at Thirty-Nine
Poem at Thirty-Nine (Walker): both are adults remembering a parent. Lawrence is overwhelmed by loss in tight couplets; Walker's free verse is grateful and calm, and she sees her father living on in herself.
Exam tips
Strong points for Piano: how the three stanzas move from present to past and back; the music as a force he cannot resist; the final simile, where the man becomes a child again.
Avoid retelling the memory. Pick a short phrase, name the method, and explain what it shows about his feelings.
Compare how the endings of Piano and Half-past Two present the effect of memory.
- Piano ends with the adult overwhelmed: he weeps like a child for the past.
- Half-past Two ends with the boy keeping the memory of a timeless moment for ever.
- Method: Lawrence's water imagery and simile; Fanthorpe's invented, fairy-tale place beyond clocks.
- Judgement: memory brings Lawrence grief, but brings Fanthorpe's boy a lasting sense of wonder.
Answer: Both poems end by showing how powerful memory is. Lawrence's speaker is defeated by it: "my manhood is cast / Down in the flood of remembrance", and the simile "I weep like a child" shows the adult turned back into a child. Fanthorpe's boy, by contrast, keeps his memory as a treasure, a timeless place he once escaped to. Lawrence's couplets carry a tide of grief, whereas Fanthorpe ends with quiet wonder.
Lawrence, New Poems (1918). Three quatrains of rhyming couplets; present, past, present. "the boom of the tingling strings"; music personified as "insidious"; loud present piano against the remembered "tinkling piano"; "I weep like a child for the past". Themes: nostalgia, mother and son, music.
- Context
- The circumstances in which a text was written and set, such as historical events, social attitudes and the writer's life (AO3 in the GCSE, AO4 in the International GCSE).
- Form
- The type and shape of a text: for example sonnet, ballad, free verse, tragedy, comedy, novel or play.
- Structure
- How a text is organised and develops: its order, shifts, turning points, openings and endings.
- Stanza
- A group of lines forming a section of a poem (a verse).
- Imagery
- Language that creates a picture or appeals to the senses, including similes, metaphors and personification.
- Personification
- Giving human qualities to something non-human.
All GCSE and International GCSE English Literature key terms and definitions →
- Not “An old photograph of his family”. No photograph is mentioned; the trigger is a sound.
- Not “A letter from his mother”. There is no letter; the memory comes through music.
- Not “A visit to the house where he grew up”. He does not go back to his old home; the memory comes to him.
- Not “Turning the pages of the music”. He is under the piano, not beside the music stand.
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Last updated 6 November 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix it.