Personal Choice Volume 2 No.42

Piano

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.

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence (1885 - 1930) was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, literary critic, travel writer, essayist, and painter. His modernist works reflect on modernity, social alienation and industrialization, while championing sexuality, vitality and instinct. Three of his most famous novels - The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover - were the subject of censorship trials for their radical portrayals of sexuality and use of explicit language.