Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.
II. “What is my lady like?”Frances Anne Kemble (1809–1893)
W
A rosy chaplet of fresh apple-bloom,
Bound with blue ribbon, lying on the snow.
What is my lady like? The violet gloom
Of evening, with deep orange light below.
She ’s like the noonday smell of a pine wood;
She ’s like the sounding of a stormy flood;
She ’s like a mountain-top high in the skies,
To which the day its earliest light doth lend;
She ’s like a pleasant path without an end;
Like a strange secret, and a sweet surprise;
Like a sharp axe of doom, wreathed with blush-roses.
A casket full of gems whose key one loses;
Like a hard saying, wonderful and wise.