For he means to make you his, O Slip Shoe Liz. And your open mouth is wet To a little boyish chatter. You’re an easy thing to flatter With your hank of hair a-twist, And your left eye in a mist-- O Slip Shoe Lovey! So hurried and so flurried And just a little worried You lean about the room, Like a mop, like a broom. O Slip Shoe Lovey! O Slip Shoe Lovey! THE ARCHANGELS Flopped on the floor With such a silken richness of dark hair, Descending breezily like blown water from her brow, And from the arched crown of her Raphael head, Between the years of twenty-five and thirty, Her face glows and is white, Like the thin spirit of a candle light. And over her forehead passes Swift waves of splendor, which must be her thought, Looking, it seems, as if a snowy curtain Were rhythmically blown at dawn in a white room! In each of her eyes there is a blue-bright spark! One time I saw two stars Held in an inch of water when the evening Was pale from dying day. And under this thin water lay dead leaves The drift of late October-- Gray leaves beneath clear water by an edge Where spring’s first flower, the azure pickerel weed, Bent over contemplated those two stars: These were the sparks in her unruffled eyes. Flopped on the floor With little hands clasped round her girlish knees Such musical thought sings through her cherub lips-- Raptures for Beauty, Raptures for Truth, Raptures for Freedom and a world that is free. While around her flames the fire of a durable hope. Till at last I sit in wonder At the miracle of such spirit, And the miracle of the youths about her, Listening with bright eyes, in the fellowship of delight, Who prompt, suggest, applaud, are passionate For the right word, the soaring thought to beat At heaven’s gate in a last burst of song. And here am I a part of this psychic circle, Bound with soft loops of gold in a charméd band Of a brood of youthful archangels fiery and strong....