Remember me not for my pleasant manner neither wit no charm did I embrace. Remember my time on this mortal coil for a different kind of grace. The Royal game, the chess board it turned me in to a god. For doing the only thing that ever felt right, I still find it rather odd.
Not for me the normal life, business or merchant banker. The only place I was truly a home was across the board from Capablanca.
We fought like tigers tooth and claw many battles did we endure. Sweet success is all I craved the taste so sweet and pure.
Remember me not for friendship or political decision but remember my games filled with grace, guile and tactical vision.
The immortal game continues although I’m sadly gone but as long as there’s a chess board my memory will go on and on.
A poem by Jay Thomas 2006. ( dedicated to Alexander Alekhine)
Your thoughts please.
From your profile
"Recently started playing OTB and apart from opening theory this site is doing nothing for my game.I'll be keeping games to an absolute minimum for a while in order to concentrtae on OTB action."
Are you remembering that you need to think (not just copy a db) in order to improve?
Edit: Any relation to Power Shaker?
Sorry to have incurred your displeasure sir! but as musch a i love this game and study it to death, i do occasionally like to find time to do other things. Poetry being one. I know i didn't make it abundantly clear but these few lines are in fact my work.
A couple of hours away from my studies to pay tribute to the finest chess brain that ever existed was, i believe time well spent.
Regards
PM
Alekhine is my favourite chess player. I like the idea of this poem, i.e. Alekhine was, a first sight, frightful as a person but played sublime chess. However I don't like the poem itself, too many forced rhymes.
Edgar Allen Poe is a wonderful poet in my opinion. Here is a poem he wrote about a knight, which is as close as he got to writing one about chess:
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"
"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"
The Poe is indeed beautiful. What about this slightly earlier one from Nicholas Breton [1542-1626] ?
The Queene is quaint, and quick Conceit,
Which makes hir walk which way she list,
And rootes them up, that lie in wait
To work hir treason, ere she wist:
Hir force is such, against hir foes,
That whom she meetes, she overthrowes.
Attributed to Powys Mathers' Arabian poet:
She sends for chess; her dreaming cheek
Shines rose above the pieces.
I lose my head, I lose my Queen,
I lose my heart; was never seen
So quaint a game as this is.
I only take through skirmishing
A Knight and Rook, while my poor King
At every point she teases.
Yet I'd have triumphed after all
If we had but agreed to call
Knights nights and Castles kisses.
Originally posted by Rene-ClaudeLovely. This one was the best. My B.A. in English Literature makes me somewhat weak to such limericks of majesty & tenderness.
Attributed to Powys Mathers' Arabian poet:
She sends for chess; her dreaming cheek
Shines rose above the pieces.
I lose my head, I lose my Queen,
I lose my heart; was never seen
So quaint a game as this is.
I only take through skirmishing
A Knight and Rook, while my poor King
At every point she teases.
Yet I'd have triumphed after all
If we had but agreed to call
Knights nights and Castles kisses.
Originally posted by Fat Ladyare you sure its eldorado and not el dorado? el dorado was the supposed Spanish city of gold which was never found.
Alekhine is my favourite chess player. I like the idea of this poem, i.e. Alekhine was, a first sight, frightful as a person but played sublime chess. However I don't like the poem itself, too many forced rhymes.
Edgar Allen Poe is a wonderful poet in my opinion. Here is a poem he wrote about a knight, which is as close as he got to writing one about che ...[text shortened]... he Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"
Originally posted by powershakerBA in Eng. Lit., eh?
Lovely. This one was the best. My B.A. in English Literature makes me somewhat weak to such limericks of majesty & tenderness.
Surely, then you recognize that your second stanza is not a limerick at all, rather a sestet in (mostly) iambic tetrameter. Limericks (though not invariably five lines long), are anapæstic.
😀