(CHORUS)
Each game of chess
Means there's one less
Variation left to be played
Each day got through
Means one or two
Less mistakes remain to be made
Not much is known of early days of chess beyond a fairly vague report
That fifteen hundred years ago two princes faught, tough brothers, for a Hindi throne
The mother cried, for no one really likes their offspring fighting to the d**h
She begged to stop the slaughter with her every breath, but sure enough one brother died
-
Sad, beyond belief, she told her winning son:
"You have caused such grief, I can't forgive this evil thing you've done"
He tried to explain how things had really been
But he tried in vain, no words of his could mollify the queen
And so he asked the wisest men he knew the way to lessen her distress
They told him he'd be pretty certain to impress by using model soldiers
on a chequered board to show it was his brother's fault
- he thus invented chess
Chess
displayed no inertia
soon spread to Persia
then west
Next
the Arabs refined it
thus redesigned, it
progressed
Still further west, and when Constantinople fell in fourteen fifty-three
One would have noticed every other refugee included in his bags a set
Once in the hands and in the minds of leading figures of the Renaissance
The spirit and the speed of chess made swift advance through all of Europe's vital lands
Where, we must record, the game was further changed
Right across the board, the western touch upon the pieces ranged
King and queen and rook and bishop, knight and pawn
All took on the look we know today - the modern game was born
And in the end we see a game that started by mistake in Hindustan
and boosted in the main by what is now Iran
become the simplest and most complicated
pleasure yet divised for just the kind of mind
who would appriciate this well-researched and fascinating yarn
(FLORENCE)
This is an all too familiar scene
(THE RUSSIAN)
Hopeless reflections on what might have been
(BOTH)
? ? ?
(FLORENCE)
Bearing in mind your predicament now
(THE RUSSIAN)
What you did then...
(BOTH)
We're just dying to know,
would you do it all again?
(CHORUS)
Each game we ? ? ?
Therefore the naming
(BOTH)
But they know for well
It's not hard to tell
Though my heart is breaking
I'd give the world for that moment with you,
And we thought we knew
That our love would last,
But the moment's past
With no morning far too far
You and I, we've seen it all
Chasing our hearts' desire
But we go on pretending
Stories like ours
Have happy endings