Throughout the poems “Half Past Two” and “Piano” childhood is one of the primary motifs presented by the authors in similar and contrasting ways

Throughout the poems “Half Past Two” and “Piano” childhood is one of the primary motifs presented by the authors in similar and contrasting ways.
Firstly, the two poems are written in different perspectives: in “Piano”, Lawrence writes as himself looking back on his past, while in “Half Past Two”, Fanthorpe writes from the view of his child self, however the poems emphasise these perspectives in similar use of tone. Firstly, to emphasise how the poem is written in a child’s perspective, Fanthorpe begins the poem in a childlike tone, as shown in the quote “Once upon a schooltime He did Something Very Wrong”. Firstly, the use of the phrase “Once upon a…” connotes the sense of a fairy-tale, showing how this poem is written in a child’s world, for fairy-tale are the extent of the stories which children hear at his age. The capitalization of the words ‘Something Very Wrong’ portray a very childlike voice as well, emphasising the importance of the incident to the child, and the immense childish guilt he has toward it. On the other hand, ‘Piano’ is evidently written in the perspective of an adult who is reminiscing to the past, but Lawrence similarly uses tone to emphasise this as in ‘the insidious mastery of song’. Throughout the poem Lawrence is narrating his past and, as shown in the quotation, he purposefully litters complex lexis from start to finish, this being the description of the song as an ‘insidous mastery’, to remind the audience that this is in the words of an adult. Perhaps this constant reminding of the audience is a reflection of his hopeless attempts to stay in his adult world, and not be transported to the memories of his childhood; he is not only reminding the audience that he is an adult, but himself. Thus, the poems similarly use tone to emphasise their narration.