From the Archives

The Crystal Gazer

Sara Teasdale

I shall gather myself into myself again,

I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,

I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball

Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,

Watching the future come and the present go—

And the little shifting pictures of people rushing

In tiny self-importance to and fro.

The Yale Review is committed to publishing pieces from its archive as they originally appeared, without alterations to spelling, content, or style. Occasionally, errors creep in due to the digitization process; we work to correct these errors as we find them. You can email [email protected] with any you find.

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) was an American poet. She was the first person to win the Poetry Society of America Prize, later renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for her 1917 poetry collection Love Songs.

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