The Game of Chess
Red knights, brown bishops, bright queens,striking the board, falling in strong “L”s of colour,Reaching and striking in angles,holding lines in one colour.This board is alive with light;these pieces are living in form,Their moves break and reform the pattern:Luminous green from the rooks,Clashing with “X”s of queens,looped with the knight-leaps.
“Y” pawns, cleaving, embanking!Whirl! Centripetal! Mate! King down in the vortex,Clash, leaping of bands, straight strips of hard colour,Blocked lights working in. Escapes. Renewal of contest.
Words in this poem
- centripetal a.
- Tending, or causing, to approach the center. [L. centrum center + peter to more toward.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Game of Chess is in the public domain. This text is taken from Lustra of Ezra Pound, Project Gutenberg ebook #55564; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ezra Pound, The Game of Chess, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/the-game-of-chess.html, id L01305.
Form and metre
The Game of Chess is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 72%). 83% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.6 syllables. 7 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AB-B----A- queensA · colourB · angles · colourB · light · form · pattern · rooks · queensA · leaps
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Red knights, brown bishops, bright queens, | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| striking the board, falling in strong “L”s of colour, | 13 | /˘··/˘·····/˘ |
| Reaching and striking in angles, | 8 | /˘·/˘·/˘ |
| holding lines in one colour. | 7 | /˘···/˘ |
| This board is alive with light; | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| these pieces are living in form, | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| Their moves break and reform the pattern: | 9 | ····˘/·/˘ |
| Luminous green from the rooks, | 7 | /˘˘···· |
| Clashing with “X”s of queens, | 7 | /˘····· |
| looped with the knight-leaps. | 5 | ····· |
| “Y” pawns, cleaving, embanking! | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Whirl! Centripetal! Mate! King down in the vortex, | 12 | ·˘/˘˘·····/˘ |
| Clash, leaping of bands, straight strips of hard colour, | 11 | ·/˘······/˘ |
| Blocked lights working in. Escapes. Renewal of contest. | 13 | ··/˘·˘/˘/˘·/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.