Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Gay
Gay as a blackbird.
—Anonymous
Gay as a bullfinch.
—Anonymous
Gay as a negro funeral.
—Anonymous
Gay as the tropic bird’s sheen is youth’s fresh frolic freeness.
—A. H. Beesly
Gay and gladsome as the air.
—Mary E. Blake
Gay as Colinette.
—Robert Bridges (American)
Gay as a woman’s wish.
—Henry Brooke
Gay … like a Swiss guard off duty.
—Robert Browning
Gay as a guinea.
—Robert Buchanan
Gay as the gilded summer sky.
—Robert Burns
Gaie as all nature at the mornyng’s smile.
—Thomas Chatterton
Gay as gold.
—Chester Plays
Gay as the dahlia’s bloom.
—Eliza Cook
Gay,
As the fairest and sweetest, that blow
On the beautiful bosom of May.
—William Cowper
Gay as a butterfly.
—Charles Dickens
Gay as a thrush.
—Austin Dobson
Gay as a chaffinch.
—Alexandre Dumas, père
Gay as larks.
—Jean de La Fontaine
Gay as Apollo’s locks.
—John Ford
Gay as the joy of a maiden’s look.
—Sam Walter Foss
Gay,
Like to a light and brilliant butterfly,
Around a dusky flower.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Gay as a mote.
—William Hazlitt
Gay as the thistledown over the lea.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker’s brim, and break on the lips while meeting.
—Charles Fenno Hoffman
Gay as bridal bowers with vows of many-petalled maids.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Gay as the morning.
—William Livingston
Gay as the hawthorn in May.
—Evan MacColl
Gay as a rising sun.
—Mahabharata
Gay as lover to the altar.
—Gerald Massey
Colors as gay as those on angels’ wings.
—Thomas Moore
Gay as the starling shoots thro’ the skies.
—F. W. H. Myers
Gay as if his life were young.
—Thomas Otway
Gay as mischief.
—Ouida
Gay as the primrose-dell in May.
—Ambrose Philips
As the feathered warblers gay.
—William Shenstone
Gay as April ere he dreams of May.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Your voice was gay
As the voice of a bird in the dawn of a day
On a sunshiny tree.
—Arthur Symons
Gay as the garments of gem-sprinkled gold.
—Bayard Taylor
Too gay … like a pink ribbon on the bonnet of a Puritan woman.
—Henry D. Thoreau
As gay as a bridegroom.
—Sir John Vanbrugh
Gay as the dancing wind.
—Sarah. C. Woolsey
Gaily, as one who hath no care or pain.
—William Watson
Gay as the spring.
—Thomas Yalden