Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Lord Byron
Appall’d;
As children discover’d bugbears.Black as death.Blended
Like tints in an immortal gem.Blush’d like the waves of hell.His brow was like the deep when tempest toss’d.Bubbles,
Like man’s vain glory, and his vainer troubles.Buoyant as wings.Carelessly as hurls the moth her wing
Against the light wherein she dies.Carnation’d like a sleeping infant’s cheek.Sheds a charm, like to the fabled Cytherea’s zone, binding all things with beauty.Clung like a cuirass to his breast.Coo,
like voices of the gods from Bolotoo.Crowding like the waves of ocean, one on the other.Dancing like dervishes, who turn as on a pivot.Dark as a sullen cloud before the sun.Dashed on like a spurr’d blood-horse in a race.Dear—as his native song to Exile’s ears.Death is like sleep; and sleep shuts down our lids.Parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away,
The last still loveliest, till—’tis gone, and all is gray.Difficult as a beginning.Droop’d as the willow when no winds can breathe.As fair a thing as e’er was form’d of clay.Fair as the crowning rose of the whole wreath.Fair, as the first that fell of womankind.Far as mortal eye can compass sight.Fell as thick as harvests beneath hail.In files they lay,
Like the mower’s grass at the close of day.Firm as a fortress.Flutters as wing’d with joy.Fresh as a nursing mother.Furious as a favored child
Balked of its wish.Gather like a locust’s crew.Gather like night-dew.Gleams, like a seraph from the sky descending.Glide like happiness away.Glow,
As if her veins ran lightning.The heart is like the sky, a part of heaven;
But changes, night and day, too, like the sky;
Now o’er it clouds and thunder must be driven,
And darkness and destruction as on high;
But when it hath been scorch’d and pierc’d and riven,
Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye
Pours forth, at last, the heart’s blood turn’d to tears.Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break.Hew’d away, like doctors of theology
When they dispute with sceptics.Howl’d for help as wolves do for a meal.A small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.Light as a Nereid in her ocean sledge.Tender light, like the first moonrise of midnight.Lone as the corse within its shroud,
Lone—as a solitary cloud,
A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear.Lovely as Love.Lull’d like the depth of ocean when at rest.Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.Melt, like man, to Time.Merry as a marriage bell.The mind, that broods o’er guilty woes,
Is like the Scorpion girt by fire,
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close
…….
So writhes the mind Remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death.Mournful—but mournful of another’s crime,
She look’d as if she sat by Eden’s door,
And grieved for those who could return no more.The muse, like mortal females, may be woo’d:
In turns she’ll seem a Paphian, or a prude;
Fierce as a bride when first she feels affright,
Mild as the same upon the second night;
Wild as the wife of alderman or peer,
Now for his grace, and now a grenadier.I have seen some nations like overloaded asses,
Kick off their burdens, meaning the higher classes.Peals
Like the eternal thunders of the deep.Perpendicular like poplars.Pierced like pard by hunter’s steel.Proportioned like the columns of the temple.Proud as a freeborn peasant.Proved like steel in tempering fire.Pure as Psyche ere she grew a wife.Pure as the prayer which
Childhood wafts above.Rich as Stamboul’s diadem.Rippled like flowing waters by the wind.Rising like water-columns from the sea.Roared and murmured like a mountain stream dashing or winding as its torrent strays.Secret as the grave.Serene as night.Shone as seraphs shine.Shines like a phosphoric sea.Shines like snow.Shrill
As ever started through a sea-bird’s bill.Shun her like garlic.Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore.Slow, like water-lilies floating down a rill.Soft as the callow cygnet in its nest.Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute.Soft as the houri strings his long entrancing note.Soft as the melody of youthful days.Soft as the memory of buried love.Soft as the unfledged birdling when at rest.Solemn, like the cloudy groan of dying thunder on the distant wind.Sped like meteors through the sky.Sprang as from a sudden trumpet’s clang.Still as a statue.Surge, like hope upon a deathbed.Sounds sweet as if a sister’s voice reproved.Voice swells up like mutter’d thunder.Swerved as from a blow.Tender light, like the first moonrise of midnight.Thrill like his lyre-strings.Tick,
Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills
Past, present, and to come.Transient as the inconstant sigh.Transmitted, like the Lord Mayor’s barge,
To the next comer.As true as a shepherd to his flock.Unearthly … like the remembered tone of a mute lyre.Unheeded as if life were o’er.Unknown as bells within a Turkish steeple.Vain
As for a brook to cope with ocean’s flood.Vanished like a corpse-light from a grave.Vary like the rainbow’s hue.His voice is like the rising storm.Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep.She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies.Welcome as Eden.White as a white sail on a dusky sea.Yearn’d as the captive toiling at escape.
