Sonnet. "What is my lady like? thou fain wouldst know—"

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.
  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.