Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
James Whitcomb Riley
As blithe and sunny as the summer days.Verses bloom like a flower.Blush like lads of seventeen.Bright as the light of her glorious eyes.His smile as bright as the midst of May when the truce-bird pipes.As bright as the morning sun.Chill as the Gryxabodill.Clean as a rose is after rain.Clear as a brook’s chuckle to the ear.Clear as the Autumn atmosphere.As clear as the twitter of birds.Deep and tender as the blue of a baby’s eye.Dim as the dusk of day.Her eyes are blue and dewy as the glimmering Summer-dawn.Eyes as fresh and clear as morning skies.With a pair o’ eyes like two fried eggs.A face as fair as the summer dawn.Fine and fair as your school-boy sweetheart’s hair.Fangless as the fat worms of the grave.Flap as a flag as the winds go by.Flared, like Titan torches flinging flakes of flame and embers, springing from the dale.Made my own heart flutter as a bird that beats for freedom at the bars that prison it.Gauzy wings fluttered by
Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky.As fragile as a strand of rain.Gently as the dew mingles with the darkening maze.As giddy as an hour-old ghost that stares into eternity.Glance … as the glints of a thousand gems.Gleams like the galleon rare of an Argonaut’s dreams.Glib as clockwork.Tresses glimmering and gleaming like glad waters running over shelving shallows, rimmed with clover.Haste … like flaming tapers brightening as they wasted.Indolent as a lazy breeze of midsummer.As jolly as a play.Jubilant as old sleigh bells.Her laugh is like a roundelay—so ringing sweet and clear.He laughed like the screech of a rusty hinge.Love’s as cunnin’ a little thing as a hummin’-bird upon the wing.Mouth was like a red rose rinsed with rain.Moving, like a skeptic’s thought,
Out of nowhere into naught.Mystical as some dreamland arched with unfathomed azure.Pale as blossoms.Peaceful as a hired hand.Plump, like tiny skins of wine.Punctual—like morning.As pure and clear as the cherry-blossoms blow in the land of Thus-and-So.Pure as a joyous prayer.Radiant as summer sun in morn.As rich with unconscious art as the first song birds of May.As ripe and rosy … as a mellow little pippin that had tumbled in the weeds.Breaking as sharply as the ice blade that loosens from the eave to slice the air and splinter into scales of flying frost.Gleam and shine
Like jewels in a stream of wine.Shut as the leaves of a white rose may
Ere the wan bud blooms out perfectly.Her smile is like the noon-splendor of a day of June.Smoother than the fur of cats.I’m as snugly shut
As a glad little worm in the heart of a nut.Soft as angels’ wings.Stirred him up like the tap of a drum.Sweet as the dew’s lip to the rose’s.As sweet as the life of the lily.As sweet as the soul of a babe.Thick as the daisies blown in grasses fanned by odorous midsummer breezes.With full voice, pure and clear, uplifted, as some classic melody in sweetest legends of old minstrelsy.White as grit.White as the cream-crested wave.White as the gleam of her beckoning hand.Yaller—like you’ve saw custard-pie with no crust.
