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| Artificial as a trellis. | 1 |
Beautiful as feet of friend
Coming with welcome at our journey’s end. | 2 |
| Blithe as the orchards and birds with the new coming of spring. | 3 |
| As brief as a dragon-fly’s repose. | 4 |
| As brief as the wave’s poise before it breaks in pearls. | 5 |
| Changeful … as windwaved flame. | 6 |
| Crinkly like curled maple. | 7 |
| Dancing like naked fauns too glad for shame. | 8 |
| Easy as for the grass to be green. | 9 |
| Easy as kissing. | 10 |
| Easy as loving. | 11 |
| Flaw-seeing eyes, like needle points. | 12 |
| Firm as Nature’s self. | 13 |
| Flew like sparks in burnt up paper. | 14 |
| Frail as frost-landscapes on a window-pane. | 15 |
Full of life and light and sweetness
As a summer day’s completeness. | 16 |
| Gleam, like midnight’s boreal dances. | 17 |
| Golden as honey in the sun. | 18 |
| Bluffly honest as a northwest wind. | 19 |
| Softly lucent as a rounded moon. | 20 |
| Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle. | 21 |
A murmur like the sough of bees
Hidden among the noon-stilled linden trees. | 22 |
| Peaceful … as a virgin lake. | 23 |
| Placid as a swan that drifts in a dream. | 24 |
| Regular as a lath. | 25 |
| Secure as happy yesterdays. | 26 |
| As shy and secret as a maid. | 27 |
| Sighs as men sigh relieved from care. | 28 |
| Simply as breathing. | 29 |
| Stare, like wild things of the wood about a fire. | 30 |
| Sudden as a stab. | 31 |
| Sweet as over new-born son the croon of new-made mother. | 32 |
| Systematic as a country cemetery. | 33 |
| Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach. | 34 |
| Tug as a flag in the wind. | 35 |
| Unconscious as the sunshine. | 36 |
| Welcome as the bird to the elm-tree bough. | 37 |
| White as thistle-down. | 38 |
There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on. | 39 |
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