Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Philip James Bailey
Darkly beautiful as death.Blaze like the fat in sacramental flame.Blending all in one long and delicious tremble like a chord.Blind as the blue skies after sunset.Bright as the great stream of stars which flows through heaven.Bright like night with stars.Bright, like river gold.Burst like sand this brave embankment of the breast.Clear at one glance, as two drops of rain in air might look into each other had they life.Clear, cold, and icy-blue, like a sea eagle’s eye.Clung to the merry music of her words, like a bird on a bough, high swaying in the wind.The maiden whose lip like a rose leaf is curled.A curse is like a cloud—it passes.Dark as Death’s Eye.Deep as Heaven’s own luminous blue.Deep as death.Deep in the heart as meteor stones in earth, dropped from some higher sphere.Distinct as thunder-peals.Drift … lightly as a leaf.As easily as an oak looseneth its golden leaves.Entrance as young conquerors fresh from spoil.Fall like small birds beaten by the storm against a dead wall, dead.Falling … softly as a snowflake.As far as finite is from infinite.Fatal as the shade of Death’s dark valley.My heart feels filling like a sinking boat.Eyes flashing, like shooting thunderbolts.Fluttered like a dead leaf in a blast.Fluttered like a winged asp.Formless as air.Fresh and fragrant as a rose.Fresh as a sprouting spring upon the hills.Generous as the sun in spring.Gleam like glass.Gleaming like the white moonlight.Golden as the sun.We do not make our thoughts; they grow in us like grain in a wood.Happy as Heaven.Haunt us as eagles haunt the mountain air.Hid, like a thought of God, unuttered.As hollow as an egg shell.Hollow and wasteful as a whirlwind.Hovered round the work like rainbow round a fountain.Imperishable as eternity.Incongruous as a merry dirge, or sacramental bacchanal.Kindly as night dew.As like each other as a sword and scythe.Lips like rosebuds peeping out of snow.Music lives within thy lips like a nightingale in roses.Love is like the rose,
And a month it may not see,
Ere it withers where it grows.Melancholy as the moon at full.Numberless as are the dead.Odorous as an angel’s fresh-culled crown.Pass like a rolled syllable of midnight thunder from the coming day.One solitary and foreseeing thought, passed, like a planet’s transit o’er the sun.Plumed like a storm-portending cloud.Prating of the stars
Like an old soldier of his scars.Pure and pointed as a star.Pure as the dead.Pure as the black of the eye.Quench in tears like a star in the sea.Radiant like a diamond.Rich in invisible treasures, like a bud of unborn sweets, and thick about the heart with ripe and rosy beauty.Rush, like a rocket tearing up the sky.Scream, like a trumpet whining through a catacomb.Cease those aching sighs,
Which shake the tear-drops from thine eyes,
As morning wind, with wing fresh wet,
Shakes dew out of the violet.Shed great thoughts as easily as an oak looseneth its golden leaves in a kindly largess to the soil it grew on.Shine at all points like a constellation.Shine like a diamond on a dead man’s hand.Shine through them as live coals through ashes.Shrunk like a withered hand.Slip away like shadows into shade.Thy sweet words drop upon the ear as soft as rose leaves on a wall.Softly sublime like lightnings in repose.Spirit is like the thread whereon are strung the beads or worlds of life.Great thoughts are still as stars.Successive, as the seasons to the sun.Suspense … like the irresolution of the sea at turn of tide.Sweep around … like angered eagles cheated of their prey.Sweet and calm as is a sister’s kiss.Stars which stand out as thick as dewdrops on the field of heaven.Thick as burning stones that from the throat of some volcano foul the benighted sky.Great thoughts, like great deeds, need no trumpet.Dark wretched thoughts, like ice-isles in a stream, choke up my mind, and clash.Unchangeable as space.Unfold themselves like flowers.United, as flesh and soul in man.Uprisen as a prayer.Vanish like a ghost before the sun.Wandering fires wait even on rottenness like a stray gleam of thought in an idiot’s brain.The world is like yon children’s merry-go-round; what men admire are carriages and hobbies.
