Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Lord De Tabley
Love bitter as Despair.Breasts as the buds of May.Breathing like the bellows of a forge.Brief as the song
Of the wood dove.Bright as sunset.Calm as an autumn night.Clear as the note of doom.Cruel as Medusa’s sculptured face.Divine as evening’s death.Expand, as tides that ebb, or tides that flow.As faint and helpless as a new-born babe.Familiar as an oath.The charioteer fell like a fluttered leaf;
Or as feather shaken from the wing
Of some high-soaring eagle, when the hail
Falls in a whirlwind and the woods cry back.Fragrant … as May.Fresh as a clover bud.My frown is like a winter house,
Laid eastward in a bitter land.Gaunt as a gibbet.Gentle as sleep.Glows as some rain-burnished rose.Languid as one from slumber newly come.Level as a sea.Life, as a windmill, grinds the bread of Life.The nations narrow and expand,
As tides that ebb, or tides that flow.As old as Fate.Pale as a wreath of Alpine snow.Thy grace must pass
As unremembered things.They perish as a robe outworn,
As faded leaves they float away.Pleasant as a wave.As poor as some church mouse.Immeasurable thirst
Raged as a flame.Rejoice
As at our first love’s voice.The burning phrase
Rocked on like ocean’s tidal swell.Sanguine as the morning skies!Spinning like a plummet down
Into the spacious gulf of deep blue air.Splendor like an angel’s love.An iron Queen,
Stern as her flinty judgment seat of doom.Sweet as sails in summer sky.Their tongue was like a mellow turret bell
To toll hearts burning into wide-lipped hell.Tumbled and jumbled, as in Titan wars.Unresponsive to desire … as puppets in a peepshow.Weak as palsy.Wintry as despair.
