Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
N. P. Willis
Brightening like a star at eve.Calm and blessed … like a rich pearl beyond the diver’s ken.Her cheek was like the moist heart of a rose.A mirror, clear as ’twere a door of air.Close as a lover in his hour of bliss.Stole out as covertly as starlight from the edging of a cloud.A tone as low and deep as love’s first whisper.Deeper than the vanities of power, or in vain pomp of glory.Effortless as stars awakening and melting out, at eve, and morning’s breaking.Familiar as a book.Fled, as time will in a dream.A flirt is like a dipper attached to a hydrant; every one is at liberty to drink from it, but no one desires to carry it away.Flirtation is like a circulating library, in which we seldom ask twice for the same volume.Fly like flower-seeds on the breeze.Free as India’s leopard.Instant as a thought.Leap like a caressing angel.Through the open lips shone visibly a delicate line of pearl,
Like a white vein within a rosy shell.Lipp’d like a lily, and as white as it.Love is a lamp unseen, burning to waste, or, if its light is found, nursed for our idle hour, then idly broken.Loveliness,
Like a rich tint that makes a picture warm
Is lurking in the chestnut of thy tress,
Enriching it, as moonlight after storm
Mingles dark shadows into gentleness.Leans meekly, like a flower
By the still river tempted from its stem
And on its bosom floating.Natural as light.Truths, as pat as paving stones in cities.Rage as old Voltaire at Ferney.Head was on her breast, rock’d like a nautilus in calm mid-ocean.In secret, as a miser tells his gold.Shine, eminent as a planet’s light.Shut from approach like sea-nymph in a shell.Slumberest here like a caged bird that never knew its pinions.Steadfastly as look the twin stars down into unfathomable wells.Still as Eden ere the birth of man.Still as starlight.Strong as a Monarch’s signet.Sultry … as if the air had fainted, and the pulse of Nature had run down, and ceased to beat.A voice sweet as an angel’s.Tremulous as a leaf forsaken of the summer.Unceasingly, like song in the time of birds.Her waist like the cup of a lily.Weighs a man down like a hod of mortar.White as a charnel bone.White as flashing icicle.
