Piano

• a lyric poem

  a short poem of songlike quality, includes the power/impact of song and power of memories as he reminisces his past and is overwhelmed with nostalgia and overflowing impacting emotions, his memories cannot be stopped. his memories are associated with memory.
• piano (title)

  hymns and singing
• Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Talking me back down the vista of years

  adverb - gentle

  sibilance - calming

  dusk - blurring of day/night (past/present)

  a woman - reminds him of his mother

  taking - PCV - not gentle/instantly transported, the music has power, front of the line = strong (music has strength/power), he tries to battle the music and does not want to go back.

  vista - a long time ago
• A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings

  a child - 3rd person to refer to himself, he does not recognise himself, there is a distance between his current self and his past.

  onomatopoeia -adds a rhythmic element and relates to sound/music, the harsh boom contrasts with the soothing sound of tingling strings
• And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings

  sibilance

  graceful imagery

  elegance

  soothing

  comfort

  tender image

  positive closeness
• In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

  1st phrase - he does not want to go back

  insidious - sneaky, the sound of the piano inadvertently took him back when he least expected it.

  insidious - to cause harm

  mastery - skill/power of song
• Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps

  plosive b - the negative and almost sinister side of song/music.

  personification of the heart - his heart longed for this, overwhelmed with strong emotions.
• To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

  positive image

  Sunday - religious connotations and a day of rest.

  home - connotes family, protection, security, warmth

  winter outside - protection

  it suggests this is the emotion that he currently longs for (warmth)

  hymns - songs (musical quality)

  cosy - adj. = family/warmth

  tinkling - reference to the tingling piano, a soft/gentle onomatopoeia
• So now it is vain fot the singer to burst into clamour

  he is not listening anymore and is oblivious to the piano, instead he is lost in the memory.
• with the great black piano appasionato

  plosive, peak emotions

  appasionato - filled with strong emotions, passionate
• The glamour of childish days is upon me,

  a flood of memories

  glamour - innocence, care-free nature, joy of childhood and romanticises it
• my manhood is cast down in the flood of remembrance,

  man - adult

  very emotional and reflects the narrative that men don't cry

  flood of remembrance - metaphor for tears, he is overwhelmed by

  the power of memory
• I weep like a child for the past

  simile - link to when he saw a child, now he there is less of a distance and more of a similarity. he is syill a child

  
  

  an ironic simile - weeping like a child about being a child. (he knows and feels that he cannot go back and feel that past warmth)
• themes


  family

  childhood

  power of music

  memory

  loss

  sadness

  gried

  emotional suffering

  love

  childhood
• structure

  3 quatrains of rhyming couplets
• 3 quatrains of rhyming couplets, regular rhythm

  regularity (AABB) - assosciates with harmony, musiical quality, written like a song. and the simplicity/innocence of childhood

  rhyming couplets - 2 lines of present and 2 lines of past, suggests conflict and the battle of the past and present, they are interlinked and overlap.
• enjambment

  the flow of memory and the power of a song.
• trochaic meter

  he longs to return
• the mood/tone

  melancholy

  wistful

  longing
• contrast

  the song is in control as it takes him against his will, contrasting the soothing image of music in stanza 1, at one point the music turns sinister and almost violent suggested by the sibilance.
• past tense

  the comforting memories make him sad, he misses his family and mother but cannot go back to childhood