Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Paul Hamilton Hayne

Aimless as an autumn leaf
Borne in November’s idle winds afar.

Ardent as the lips of love.

Ascend, like angels beautiful, a shining Jacob’s ladder of the mind.

Capricious as the vagrant wind.

Dreadfully, as if from realms of mystical despairs.

Ebb like the tides of a living heart.

A nameless charm enthralling, like the ghost of music melting on a rainbow spray of sound.

Fierce as sin.

Flashes … like a revelation.

Flashed like dazzling arrow tipped
With amorous heat.

Fresh as a blossom bathed by April rain.

A glance as bright as a gnome’s in his mine of gold.

Glide
As thought through spirits sanctified.

Graceful as a springborn fairy.

Impalpable as stars-beams in deep seas.

The kisses of thy deathless lips,
Like strange star-pulses, throbbed through space.

Pure as infant’s brow.

Shrill … like the tingling steel of an elfin gong.

Cheeks, soft as September’s rose
Blushing but faintly on its faltering stem.

Sparkling, as if a Naiad’s silvery feet
In quiet and coy retreat,
Glanced through the star-gleams on calm summer nights.

Divinely stirred,
As if the vanished soul of Keats,
Had found its new birth in a bird.

Sweet as tropic winds at night.

Tranquil as the clear moonlight, that woos the palms on Orient shores.

Vanished like a baleful star.

Pure and white,
As some shy spirit in a haunted place.

White as the lips of passion.