Chess Poems

Even before I started playing chess I was fascinated as a classicist by Hieronymus Vida's poem Scacchia Ludus from the 1500s. It's a mini-epic of about 700 Latin hexameters which narrates a chess game between Apollo and Mercury. He also wanted to avoid making up neo-Latin words so he called the rooks "towers" (arces in Latin), and described them as being carried into war on the backs of elephants. This was the inspiration for the modern shape of the rook as well as the term "castling." For the poem he invented a goddess of chess called Scacchia.

In 1763, the judge and linguist William Jones (who was the first person to articulate clearly that there was a family of related Indo-European languages) wrote a poem called Caissa in rhyming English couplets which was inspired by Vida's poem. In his poem Jones calls the goddess of chess Caissa and explains how chess was invented: the god of war, Mars, was hitting on her and she was rejecting him, so Mars went to the brother of Venus, who created the game of chess for him as a gift he could give to Caissa:

He fram'd a tablet of celestial mold,
Inlay'd with squares of silver and of gold;
Then of two metals form'd the warlike band,
That here compact in show of battle stand;
He taught the rules that guide the pensive game,
And call'd it Cassa from the dryad's name:

here's my contribution:

Eight white teeth gnash against 8 black teeth,
some o' my pearly whites, for activity I bequeath,
a fighters smile, that's my style,
horseys jump to the fray,
and black bishops them belay,
the prickly pin, they say 'for the win',
but my own bishops daunt those shackles,
my gliding queen shows her hackles,
to which my foe rejoined, 'castles',
Now my rook rocks the e-file,
but then black showed his true gile,
stalled, and then sacked the queen,
and just when I thought 'he's a has-been',
he clocked me for the win!

The ones I have wouldn't make it past the mods sorry :-)

Let's just say what happened at the Nantucket Open is gonna stay in Nantucket.

@TalMagicalDragon said in #2:
> You know the rules and so do I
> A full maneuver's what I’m thinking of
> You wouldn’t get this checkmate from any other guy
>
> I just wanna tell you how I’m forking
> Gotta make you underpromote
>
> Never gonna give my Pawns up
> Never gonna let Horsey down
> Never gonna run around and desert my Bishops
> Never gonna make my Rooks cry
> Never gonna say goodbye to my Queen
> Never gonna tell a lie and hurt my King
>
> We’ve played each other for so long
> Your heart’s been getting checkmated but you’re too shy to say it
> Inside we both know what’s been going on
> We know the game and we’re gonna play it
>
> And if you ask me how I’m forking
> Don’t tell me you’re too blind to mate
>
> Never gonna give my Pawns up
> Never gonna let Horsey down
> Never gonna run around and desert my Bishops
> Never gonna make my Rooks cry
> Never gonna say goodbye to my Queen
> Never gonna tell a lie and hurt my King
>
> :)
> You got King-Rolled :)
> @pranavramesh8 sent me this message
What a poem bro he sent you. WHat a poem.
FANTASTICO!!
Kinda bit a rapping poem.
Also he is RM of BTS
Good Rapper

Yeeeeaaaah im gonna take your horse with my dark square bishop gonna... ruin ya pawn structure.

Heres a better poem
Miss Menchik is of master rank,
It seems Maróczy she’s to thank;
Still, there is little doubt of it
She owes a deal to native wit.
Much knowledge she has garnered in,
E’en ’gainst the giants she’ll oft win
– No doubt sometimes to their chagrin –
Chess champion of the gentler sex
Here’s luck to her! Should she annex
In her next venture some big prize
Keen critics will feel no surprise.
Bravo ‘Bogol’, you’ve shown pluck.
One and all we wish you luck.
Gee, some thought you’d barged between
Other players who’d have been
Less likely straightaway to lose
Just as friend Alekhine might choose;
Undaunted, ‘Bogol’, you went in
Believing you’d a chance to win.
Or failing that, to make a fight,
Which you are doing as we write.