Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
John Keats
Ample as the largest winding-sheet.Anxious as hind towards her hidden fawn.Like two drops of dew
Exhaled to Phœbus’ lips, away they are gone.Beautiful as an oriole.See behind, as doth the hunted hare.No bigger than an unobserved star.Bright as the bow of Iris.Bright as the humming-bird’s green diadem.Changeless as truth.Chilly as a dripping well.Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray.Clear as infant’s eyes.Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth
On the deer’s tender haunches.Cold as a bubbling well.Complacent as a cat.Cool as aspen leaves.Crafty as a snake.O’er our silence creep
Like whispers of the household gods that keep
A gentle empire o’er fraternal souls.Dark as the parentage of chaos.More dead than Morpheus’ imaginings.Deify me, as if some blithe wine
Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
And so become immortal.Dismiss’d … as Jove fans off the clouds.Drop like hours into eternity.Dumb as the grave.Pouring as easily as hour-glass sand.As enduring as a camel.The sophist’s eye,
Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly,
Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging.Fair as some wonder out of fairy land.Fairer than Phœbe’s sapphire-region’d star.Fame, like a wayward Girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless Boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease.Fixed as a rocky marge.Flit like a ghost away.Freckled like a pard.Free as an eagle.Free as the sky-searching lark.Fresher than berries of a mountain-tree.More gentle than the wind in summer.Glow
Like the northern lights on snow.High as the berries of a wild ash tree.Huge as a planet.Joyous as a bobolink.Labyrinth you there, like a hid scent in an unbudded rose.Lock’d up like veins of metal.Sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like the bubbles when rain pelteth.Melted, as the rose
Blendeth its odour with the violet.Mild as a star in water.Mild
As grazing ox unworried in the meads.Mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.Postured motionless,
Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern.Mournful as … Memnon’s harp.Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness.Noiseless as the passing mountain rain.Numerous as shadows haunting fairily
The brain.Pale as smooth-sculptured stone.A pang
As hot as death’s is chill with fierce convulse.Patient as an ant.Patient as a hen-bird.Spiritual sweets to plentitude,
As bees gorge full their cells.Pure as ice-drop that froze on the mountain.Quiet as a stone.Ravishments more keen
Than Hermes’ pipe.Remorseless as an infant’s bier.Love doth scathe
The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses.Scud like a wild bird.More secret than a nest of nightingales.More serene than Cordelia’s countenance.Tremulous shake,
As in a palsied Druid’s harp unstrung.Shone like the bubbling foam about a keel.We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl’d
In the recesses of a pearly shell.Silent as a consecrated urn.Silent as a tomb.E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.Sleeker than Night-swollen mushrooms.Sail, slowly as an icy isle
Upon a calm sea drifting.Faint-smiling like a star
Through autumn mists.More softly than the east could blow
Arion’s magic to the Atlantic isles.More soothing than the pretty hummer
That stays one moment in an open flower
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower.Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar.Steadfast as a principle.Stern as Pluto’s sceptre.Dead-still as a marble man.Striped like a zebra.More suddenly than doth a moment go.Sweet as a muskrose upon new-made hay.Sweet as blue heavens o’er enchanted isles.Sweet as love.Sweeter than the rill
To its old channel.Swift as a fathoming plummet down he fell.Swiftly as a bright Phœbean dart.Delicious symphonies, like airy flowers,
Budded and swell’d, and, full-blown, shed full showers
Of light, soft, unseen leaves of sounds divine.Thoughtless as a lark.Towers like an ocean-cliff.More tranquil than a musk-rose blowing in a green island.Trembling like an aspen-bough.True as innocence.Unheeded as a threshold brook.More unseen
Than Satan in his exile.Vague as solitary dove,
Nor knew that nests were built.Vain as swords
Against the enchased crocodiles.Vexed like a morning eagle, lost and weary,
And purblind amid foggy midnight wolds.Wan as primroses gathered at midnight.Wane,
Like melodies upon a sandy plain,
Without an echo.Warm as a dove’s nest among summer trees.Weak as spider’s skein.White as flocks new-shorn.Whiter than a star.Wipe
My life away like a vast sponge of fate.Wise as an owl.Withers, like a palm
Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm.Yielded like the mist
Which eagles cleave, upmounting from their nests.
