Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

James Russell Lowell

Artificial as a trellis.

Beautiful as feet of friend
Coming with welcome at our journey’s end.

Blithe as the orchards and birds with the new coming of spring.

As brief as a dragon-fly’s repose.

As brief as the wave’s poise before it breaks in pearls.

Changeful … as windwaved flame.

Crinkly like curled maple.

Dancing like naked fauns too glad for shame.

Easy as for the grass to be green.

Easy as kissing.

Easy as loving.

Flaw-seeing eyes, like needle points.

Firm as Nature’s self.

Flew like sparks in burnt up paper.

Frail as frost-landscapes on a window-pane.

Full of life and light and sweetness
As a summer day’s completeness.

Gleam, like midnight’s boreal dances.

Golden as honey in the sun.

Bluffly honest as a northwest wind.

Softly lucent as a rounded moon.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

A murmur like the sough of bees
Hidden among the noon-stilled linden trees.

Peaceful … as a virgin lake.

Placid as a swan that drifts in a dream.

Regular as a lath.

Secure as happy yesterdays.

As shy and secret as a maid.

Sighs as men sigh relieved from care.

Simply as breathing.

Stare, like wild things of the wood about a fire.

Sudden as a stab.

Sweet as over new-born son the croon of new-made mother.

Systematic as a country cemetery.

Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach.

Tug as a flag in the wind.

Unconscious as the sunshine.

Welcome as the bird to the elm-tree bough.

White as thistle-down.

There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.