Chance

How many times we must have met
Here on the street as strangers do,
Children of chance we were, who passed
The door of heaven and never knew.

Sara Teasdale

Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri and her first poem publication was in 1907. Teasdale's style was characterized by clarity and simplicity, often focusing on themes of love, nature, and death. She won the Columbia University Poetry Society Prize for her 1917 collection Love Songs. Unfortunately, she faced severe health issues and depression towards the end of her life, leading to her suicide in 1933.

Sara Teasdale

The Wanderer

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

Faces

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

Summer Night, Riverside

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

Song I

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Lovely Chance

O lovely chance, what can I do
To give my gratefulness to you?
You rise between myself and me
With a wise persistency;
I would have broken body and soul,
But by your grace, still I am whole.
Many a thing you did to save me,
Many a holy gift you gave me,
Music and friends and happy love
More than my dearest dreaming of;
And now in this wide twilight hour
With earth and heaven a dark, blue flower,
In a humble mood I bless
Your wisdom and your waywardness.
You brought me even here, where I
Live on a hill against the sky
And look on mountains and the sea
And a thin white moon in the pepper tree.

Sara Teasdale

The Opportunity

Forty springs back, I recall,
We met at this phase of the Maytime:
We might have clung close through all,
But we parted when died that daytime.

We parted with smallest regret;
Perhaps should have cared but slightly,
Just then, if we never had met:
Strange, strange that we lived so lightly!

Had we mused a little space
At that critical date in the Maytime,
One life had been ours, one place,
Perhaps, till our long cold daytime.

- This is a bitter thing
For thee, O man: what ails it?
The tide of chance may bring
Its offer; but nought avails it!

Thomas Hardy

Faces

People that I meet and pass
In the city's broken roar,
Faces that I lose so soon
And have never found before,

Do you know how much you tell
In the meeting of our eyes,
How ashamed I am, and sad
To have pierced your poor disguise?

Secrets rushing without sound
Crying from your hiding places
Let me go, I cannot bear
The sorrow of the passing faces.

People in the restless street,
Can it be, oh can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?

Sara Teasdale

Quite By Chance

She flung the parlour window wide
    One eve of mid-July,
And he, as fate would have it tide,
    That moment sauntered by.
His eyes were blue and hers were brown,
    With drooping fringe of jet;
And he looked up as she looked down,
    And so their glances met.
        Things as strange, I dare to say,
        Happen somewhere every day.

A mile beyond the straggling street,
    A quiet pathway goes;
And lovers here are wont to meet,
    As all the country knows.
Now she one night at half-past eight
    Had sought that lonely lane,
When he came up, by will of fate,
    And so they met again.
        Things as strange, I dare to say,
        Happen somewhere every day.

The parish church, so old and gray,

Frederick Langbridge

Come-By-Chance

As I pondered very weary o'er a volume long and dreary,
For the plot was void of interest; 'twas the Postal Guide, in fact,
There I learnt the true location, distance, size and population
Of each township, town, and village in the radius of the Act.

And I learnt that Puckawidgee stands beside the Murrumbidgee,
And the Booleroi and Bumble get their letters twice a year,
Also that the post inspector, when he visited Collector,
Closed the office up instanter, and re-opened Dungalear.

But my languid mood forsook me, when I found a name that took me;
Quite by chance I came across it, "Come-by-Chance" was what I read;
No location was assigned it, not a thing to help one find it,
Just an N which stood for northward, and the rest was all unsaid.

I shall leave my home, a...

Andrew Barton Paterson

Did You Never Know

Did you never know, long ago, how much you loved me,
That your love would never lessen and never go?
You were young then, proud and fresh-hearted,
You were too young to know.

Fate is a wind, and red leaves fly before it
Far apart, far away in the gusty time of year,
Seldom we meet now, but when I hear you speaking,
I know your secret, my dear, my dear.

Sara Teasdale