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

James Montgomery

Beautiful as Dian’s face.

Bounteous as the Nile’s dark waters.

Brilliant as rain-drops, when the western sun
Sees his own miniature of beams in each.

Broke like a sea-bubble on the sand.

Clear as the blue, sublime, o’er-arching sky.

Constant as the day and night from east to west.

Corrupted as the grave.

Couch’d like a lion watching for his prey.

Covert as the birth of thought.

Crawl,
Like caterpillars on a wall.

The Dead are like the stars by day;
Withdrawn from mortal eye,
But not extinct, they hold their way
In glory through the sky.

Dishevell’d hair,
Like eagle’s plumage ruffled by the air.

Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea.

And the bright dew-bead on the bramble lies, like liquid upon beauty’s eyes.

Fair as Orion.

Fair as the rainbow shines through darkening showers.

Faltering like the skylark’s young.

Far as imagination’s eye can roll.

Fatal as the Egyptian night,
When the eldest-born were slain.

Fierce as a turkey-cock.

Flared like molten brass.

Floats like soft-melting murmurs of grief.

Flown, like morning clouds, a thousand ways.

Frail as the clouds of sunset.

Free as Severn’s waves, that spring to bless
Their parent hills.

Glared like a torch amidst creation’s tomb.

Glare,
Like fiery serpents hissing through the air.

Gleam, like drifted gold in summer’s cloudless beam.

Gleam’d, like the meteors of a northern sky.

Glistening like gossamer.

Glowed like a torch amid creation’s tomb.

Hid like a buried star.

Keen as a wolf.

Loathsome as death.

Lovely as an infant’s dream
On the waking mother’s breast.

Mingling foes,
Like billows dash’d in conflict.

Pass away, like a thin cloud that melts across the moon.

Passed
Like autumn foliage withering in the blast.

Peep like Venus rising from her shell.

Perishing,
As though they were but things of dust and ashes.

Pure as a wreath of snow on April flowers.

Radiated like the stars.

Ran, as in the terror of a dream.

Shine sweetly through the gloom,
Like glimpses of eternal day beyond the tomb.

Shiver’d, like wither’d moss.

Shot, like meteors changed from stars to gleams of lightning.

Silent as the depth of night.

Smote him like a judgment from above.

Soft as evening o’er the ocean,
When she charms the waves to rest.

Sported like gilded insects on the wing.

Sprang, as smitten with a mortal wound.

Sweet as Angel accents.

Swift as Death’s own arrows dart.

Swifter than the frighted dove.

Swims, like an eagle, in the eye of noon.

Terrible as torrents in their fall.

Triumphantly ride,
Like foam on the surges, the swans of the tide.

Unchanging still from year to year,
Like stars returning in their sphere,
With undiminish’d rays.

Variable as flickering flames.

Volatile as the fragrance of a flower.

Wild as the changes of a dream.

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