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

Virgil

Bitterer than Sardinian herbage.

Clinging like sentry to his post.

Clings … like pitch.

Droningly … like the sigh of the bleak south wind through the forest, like the crash of the troubled sea as its waves retire from the beach, like the roar of the surging blaze in the closed furnace.

Gluts her vengeance with his hated blood: easily as a hawk, the bird of augury, darting from a lofty rock, comes up with a dove high in the clouds, holds her in her gripe, and with crooked talons tears out her heart, while gore and plucked feathers come tumbling from the sky.

Fleeting as the wings of sleep.

Gleaming like a sea.

As the vine is the glory of the trees it clasps, as the grapes of the vine, as the bull of the herd, as the standing corn of the fruitful field, thou and thou alone art the glory of those who love thee.

Helpless, like doves driven headlong down by a murky tempest.

Implacable as the wind.

Motionless as a pool.

Raving … like a Maenad starting up at the rattle of the sacred emblems, when the triennial orgies lash her with the cry of Bacchus, and Cithæron’s yell calls her into the night.

Rush … like ravenous wolves in night’s dark cloud, driven abroad by the blind rage of lawless hunger.

All earthly things are doomed to fall away and slip back into Chaos, like a boatman who just manages to make head against the stream, if the tension of his arms happens to relax, and the current whirls away the boat headlong down the river’s bed.

Squalid, like the traveler when he emerges from his bath of dust.

Sweet is your strain to my ears, heavenly poet, as is sleep to tired limbs on the grass, as is the quenching of thirst in mid-day heat in the stream where sweet waters play.

More tenacious than birdlime or than the pitch of Phrygian Ida.

Thick as the hail with which the storm-clouds rattle on the roof.

Like a rock in the sea, stands unshaken; like a rock in the sea before the rush and crash of waters, which, amid thousands of breaking waves, is fixed by its own weight; the crags and the spray-foamed stones roar about it in vain, and the lashed seaweed falls idly by its side.

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