| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | II. “What is my lady like?” | | By Frances Anne Kemble (1809–1893) |
| | | WHAT is my lady like? thou fain wouldst know. | |
| 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. | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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. | | | | |
|
|
