Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
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 earth’s generations pass.Perish, as the quickening breath of God … is withdrawn.Return, like a late summer when the year grows old.Rigid as the will of Fate.Round and round they flew,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We softly fold the cradle-sheet.Voice like the music of rills.Thy pleasant youth, a little while withdrawn,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.
