I was playing chess with my friend Jeff online. We were nearing the endgame and thinking about calling it a draw. Our game came to a sudden halt when we discovered the site we're using doesn't allow more than 15 moves in one day.

So we decided to continue blind, just by exchanging moves via instant message and keeping track of the board in our heads. It was very exciting, a bit like the finale of The Silence of the Lambs, except neither of us had night-vision goggles.

Finally, Jeff wrote the following:

Let's call it a draw, I can see how you will get that pawn
then what, I don't know, more slaughter
of pawns, and for what

I read over the conversation later and I was struck by this triplet's resemblence to something by, say, Matthew Arnold.