Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
John Milton
Abortive as the first-born bloom of spring.Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree,
Laden with blooming gold, hath need the guard
Of dragon watch with unenchanted eye,
To save her blossoms and defend her fruit
From the rash hand of bold incontinence.Books are as meats and viands are: some are good, some of evil substance.Childhood shows the man, as the morning shows the day.Crumble like the chaff of a summer threshing-floor.Declined, like a flower surcharged with dew.Dropt from the zenith like a falling star.Fair as the noon sky.Fierce as a comet.Fierce as ten furies.Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.Innumerable as the stars of night.As killing as the canker to the rose.Loud as from numbers without number.Mild, as when Zephyrus or Flora breathes.Stood mute as silence was in Heaven.Numberless as the gay motes that people the sunbeams.Outrageous as the sea, dark, wasteful, wild.Vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth.Profound as that Serbonian bog.Rose like an exhalation.Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind.Silent as the moon.Smiled with superior love, as Jupiter
On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds
That shed May flowers.Squat like a toad.Supreme as a pope.Swift as the lightning glance.Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star.Terrible as hell.Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa.Stood thick as stars.Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps.His words, like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command.
