The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Teasdale, Sara. “The Crystal Gazer.” Dark of the Moon (The Macmillan Company, 1926).

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

Sara Trevor Teasdale (1884–1933) was an American lyric poet who wrote about beauty, love, and death in the early 20th century. Over the course of her life she experienced love and disillusionment, both of which appeared in her poems. In 1917, her collection Love Song won the Columbia Poetry Prize (later renamed the Pulitzer), a marker of high distinction. However, a combination of chronic physical illness and mental health issues culminated in suicide. This personal upheaval overlaps with the disorientation from which Modernism emerged. War, rapid industrial growth, and mistrust of tradition fueled the Modernist movement, which flourished between the late-19th century and mid-20th century. Teasdale's poem "The Crystal Gazer" conveys the Modernist themes of fragmented identity and autonomy.

“The Crystal Gazer" is composed of two quatrains with ABCB rhyme schemes. In the first quatrain, the speaker states her intention to gather her scattered selves into a whole unit. She compares her holistic self to a crystal ball in which she can scry images of nature. In the second stanza, the speaker remains in the sanctuary of herself as the busy world keeps moving around her.