Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Bayard Taylor
Allured all hearts as ocean lures the land.Alone like some deserted world.Each falling hoof
Beat like a flail beneath the thresher’s roof.Blissful, as if sin
Or more than gentlest grief had never been.Blown like leaves before the whirlwind’s fury fleeing.Blushes … as a young virgin on her wedding night.Like a greyhound when slipped from the leash, he bounded.Bloom as bright as opening moon.Brightened like the moon.The banners burst,
Like buds of April breezes burst.Changeful as the sea.Clear as the blast of horn.Clung like drowning men beneath the wave.As the night-mists … cold.Speaks to confuse, like speech by age o’ertaken.Countless as the desert sands.Curl as if a frost had stung them.The light of speech descends like a tongue of the Pentecost.Drying up like a brook when the woods have been cleared around.Dusk as dying stars.As a guardian Muse thou art earnest.Eyes … clear as the unshadowed Grecian heaven.Fair as some Arcadian dell.Fair as the last star that leaves the morning air.Fair as the loveliest landscape of pastoral England.Fierce, as powers at bay.Fluctuates like a sleepy wave.Fluttered like a callow lark,
With dim fore-feeling of the azure free,
Sustaining wing and strength of songful glee.Youth follows life, as bees the honeybell.Frail
As May’s first lily in a Northern vale.Free as song.Gay as the garments of gem-sprinkled gold.Glare, as when a torch is hurled before a sleeper’s eyes.Gleam like sea-mists o’er the plain.Glimmered through the misty sphere like moonlit marble.Glow … like the sunset’s flush on a field of snow.Gone, as they never had been.Harmless … as petals of a flower.Hoarse as warning prophets in an evil age.As idly as a babe that sees the painted pictures of a book.Joyous as the cadence of the sea.Light as floating leaf of orchard snow, loosed by the pulse of Spring.Gallop … light as any antelope upon the hills of the Gavilòn.Lips like the honeyed lips of Hylas.Lips, parting like a loose bow, that just has launched its arrow.Lithe as the dark-eyed Syrian gazelle.Minced like a nestling’s food.Abundance is outpoured
Like worship at a shrine adored.Passed, like a sudden squall that tears the sea,
Yet leaves a sun to smile the billows down.Peaceful as dew-mist from an evening sky.Permanent as marble.Plain as a weed.Pliant as the air.Pure as morns of Paradise.Receding as a cloud in air.Rose like dust before the whirlwind’s force.Roar,
Like the din of wintry breakers on a sounding wall of shore.Seasoned as twin beams of soundest oak.Secure as the orchard-turf.Shimmered … like meteor-fires that haunt a fairy dell.Shone like isles of tawny gold.Like a sheathless sabre … shines.Shout like a storm on hills of pine.Silent as a cloud that sleeps in midday on a mountain peak.Sink as the pausing of music.As a pearl within its shell, the happy spirit sleeps in me.Around him slid like a wave.Soft, as Heaven’s angelic messenger might touch the lips of prayer, and make them blest.Sparkled like falling tears.Stains, like sunshine falling through heraldic panes that rise between the altar and the sky.Stretch like imploring arms.Strong, and bold, and free as the milk-white foal of the Nedjidee.Subtle as a serpent.Songs of love are sweeter than Bassora’s nightingales.Sweet as a morn of Paradise.Throbbed, as by sudden fever stirred.Timorous as a truant child.Warm as a new-made bride.Whirl as if a tempest flung them.Whirled in a swift and cloudy turbulence, as when some star of Eblis downward hurled by Allah’s bolt, sweeps with its burning hair the waste of darkness.
