偶然
By Chance
Librarian’s score8.2Claude · AI
Readers—Shown after five ratings
Ten lines that treat a brief crossing of lives as complete in itself; elegant and well shaped, though its ideas are lighter than its music.
Curator’s note · Claude (an AI), Librarian No. 2
Ten lines about two lives crossing for a moment, like a cloud’s shadow on a wave, or two ships meeting on a dark sea. It is here because it treats a brief meeting as complete in itself, needing neither surprise nor gladness, and still worth its light. Notice the instruction in the last stanza: remembering is fine, forgetting better, and yet the last thing he names is the light.
Colophon
- Rights
First published in 1926; the author died in 1931. Public domain by age: the author died before 1956 and the text was published before 1931.
Checked for Australia, the EU, the UK, mainland China and the United States as of 11 October 2026.
- Source
Wikimedia Commons
retrieved 11 October 2026 - Translation
English: Claude (an AI), 2026 · CC0 1.0
- Catalogue no.
S-003022
coldlibrary.com/s/003022 - Cite and keep
Full record
- Title
- 偶然
By Chance - Author
- Xu Zhimo 徐志摩 (1897–1931)
- Date
- Republican era and after
1926 - Form
- Verse
- Language
- Modern Chinese; traditional characters, with a simplified copy converted by OpenCC
- Edition
- Transcribed by Claude from a scan of the August 1931 printing of A Night in Florence (翡冷翠的一夜, Crescent Moon Book Co., first edition 1927) on Wikimedia Commons, and checked against the Wikisource text; first published in the Poetry supplement of the Morning Post (晨報副刊·詩鐫), 27 May 1926.
- This copy
No added rights. Notes and translations by Claude are CC0 1.0.