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Home  »  A Dictionary of Similes  »  William Cullen Bryant

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

William Cullen Bryant

Ancient as the sun.

Beautiful as ever looked
From white clouds in a dream.

Clinging … as friend with friend, or husband with wife,
Makes hand in hand the passage of life.

Differ as an octave flute and a tavern gong.

Fair as the hills of Paradise.

Fickle as the sea.

Fierce as the shout of victory.

Fling … as a bird flings o’er his shivering plumes the fountain’s spray.

Seasons flit before the mind as flit the snow-flakes in a winter storm, seen rather than distinguished.

Flittering here and there, like sunshine in the uneasy ocean-waves.

Floating downward in airy play,
Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd
That whiten by night the milky way.

Glimmer like a star in autumn’s hazy night.

Glowing in the green, like flakes of fire.

Gorgeous as are a rivulet’s banks in June.

Heaped like a host in battle overthrown.

Howling, like a wolf, flies the famished northern blast.

Light as the whispers of a dream.

The soft memory of her virtues … lingers like twilight hues.

Modest and shy as a nun.

As shadows cast by cloud and sun flit o’er the summer grass,
So, in thy sight, Almighty One! earth’s generations pass.

Perish, as the quickening breath of God … is withdrawn.

Return, like a late summer when the year grows old.

Rigid as the will of Fate.

Round and round they flew,
As when, in spring, about a chimney-top,
A cloud of twittering swallows, just returned,
Wheel round and round, and turn and wheel again,
Unwinding their swift track.

Sparkle like brooks in the morning sun.

Sparkling like snow-wreaths in the early sun.

Branches stream like the dishevelled hair
Of women in the sadness of despair.

Sweep, like currents journeying through the windless deep.

Swept … like leaves before the autumn gale.

Swept … like ocean-tides uprising at the call of tyrant winds.

Sweet, as when winter storms have ceased to chide.

Tenderly, as round the sleeping infant’s feet,
We softly fold the cradle-sheet.

Voice like the music of rills.

Thy pleasant youth, a little while withdrawn,
Waits on the horizon of a brighter sky;
Waits, like the morn, that folds her wings and hides
Till the slow stars bring back her dawning hour;
Waits, like the vanished spring, that slumbering bides
Her own sweet time to waken bud and flower.

Wandering as the wind.

Waste … like April snow in the warm noon.